By Time to eat my words. A month ago I posted an article about the Geek Phone One but my tone was of cautious pessimism. I wasn’t sure the phone and company were real and even if they were, I strongly doubted the project had the wings to fly. We’re now seeing the first signs that I could be completely wrong.
The company held an event in Barcelona Spain which was attended by the folks at Engadget Spanish (translated). GeeksPhone did in fact unveil their new Android Phone – dubbed “One” – and announced a bunch of details on specs and such:
- Android 1.5 (will upgrade to 2.0 Donut when released)
- 625 Mhz Marvell PXA310 Processor
- 3.2 inch resistive touchscreen
- Mini-USB port
- MicroSD slot
- Quadband EDGE and HSDPA
- WiFi
- Bluetooth
- AGPS
- 3.2 MP Camera
- Front facing camera for video calling
The phone is slated to launch this fall for somewhere around $350 to $425… unlocked of course. Even better, the company has promised that you’ll have root access to the phone right out of the box – someting developers and hackers (dare we say geeks?) will surely love.
One of the initial red flags was the company’s practically non-existent and extremely uglified web presence. I was happy to see a completely revamped site that gives GeeksPhone and their One device a quality home for a product that seems quite promising for Geeks around the world:
This is what I said about Geek Phone One a month ago:
I just don’t see this happening. I would love to be proven wrong though.
It looks like I WILL be proven wrong and as I explained – that would be great. Keep in mind that the device shown in Barcelona, at least according to reports, was non-working prototype. But in the next few weeks they plan to have something ready for review and their blog promises pictures and videos galore.
We’re eagerly awaiting our helping of humble pie!
So how can one tell if these foreign phones will be compatible with t-mobile’s us 3g network? I see quad band edge, hpdsa, aws, yadayadayada. Anyone know how one can quickly determine if these phones will work, like heiwei or the one? Based on specs published? Don’t tell me the answer, teach me so I know for future specs, how to read them. Thansk!!!
Re: Root access. Does that mean it won’t have access to paid apps?
well i might be half geek but im also the coolest and most popular kid in school even though this phone might be nice
1- i dont wanna walk around with a phone called “geek phone
2-what do we know about their build quality this is their first product and its a complete omnia knock off i guess we should wait for some more phones to come out and some reviews and experiences from people
hhh no craig it doesnt ..it means u can put roms like sense and other dev made roms in your phone without the possibility of bricking ur phone and it means u have more control of ur phone
@BobCat – 3G GSM phones (AT&T, T-Mobile, most of the rest of the world, but not Verizon or Sprint) use 2 different radios to communicate with the wireless towers: the 2G GSM radio, and the 3G WCDMA radio. Quad-band GSM means that the phone will work with any worldwide GSM provider, but only up to EDGE speeds. When it comes to WCDMA, there are a couple of incompatible frequencies. AT&T uses the 850MHz / 1900MHz pair, while T-Mobile uses 1700MHz. The RF band around 1700MHz is also known as AWS. I think most of the rest of the world uses 2100MHz. We will probably eventually see quad-band WCDMA phones, but as far as I know no chip maker has a quad-band WCDMA radio.
So, in summary, most GSM phone will work with T-Mobile at EDGE speeds. If you want 3G as well, you’re looking for 1700MHz or AWS.
If you want more (very detailed) information, you can check out http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=99&p=1492
@Craig – There were some problems with the Google Developer phones (i.e. rooted phones) being blocked from the market. I think Google “fixed” that, but then they added copy protection to the market. Developer phones aren’t able to access applications that have copy protection enabled. It’s unclear whether this phone will have the same limitation.
It has WQVGA (240×400) not HVGA (320×480) as Magic and Hero.
:((
resistive touch screen. what a joke.
From looking at the slides, here are some updated translations or clarifications:
– Custom interface with widget and themes
– Office and multimedia apps
– Google Apps (mentions Maps and Market but not specifically Gmail/Calendar/Google Experience)
– Thermaloptic trackpad
– The resistive screen is “New Generation” (whatever that means)
– 3.2MP camera has autofocus and auto white balance
– Front facing camera specifically mentions Skype
– Video acceleration (MGEG1/2/4 H.264)
– DVB-T standard receiver (Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcast receiver for EU)
So things which stand out as quite interesting to me other than those already mentioned (like the first front facing camera) are:
– This will have a custom interface out of the box.
– For those in EU it has a TV receiver.
– It has “Office” apps!
Hey guys, I’m Javier Aguera, COO of GeeksPhone.
I’m trying to keep up with most important blogs and be there for answering any questions people want to ask… so here you have me.
Any question or doubt you have, don’t hesitate to ask here or at my personal mail [email protected] (you can use [email protected] but another colleague may reply.
We haven’t been contacted by any company from the US for partnering with us. We will be happy to adapt our hardware for that market. Currently, it’s HSDPA 2100 (standard almost worldwide -except US-). We could also adapt DVB-T (EU) to DVB-T (America) or DVB-H (world).
Cheers,
Javier
Only thing cool about this is the front facing camera, i dont get why more builds arent including this. Skyping on ur phone would be sweeeet
@daniel yawkowsky – so umts 1700 is compatible? Any foreign phone that says 1700 will work with t-mobile 3g? This “one” phone won’t work because it says hsdpa? Thanks for your help!!!
there’s no “back” or “home” buttons !!!
if “new generation” resistive touchscreen means use of numeric-analogic technology, then it’s not that bad at that price.
Missing buttons are supposed to be present in the retail version..
can’t wait to see the final hardware
What’s with the funky antenna?
It resembles the Omnia, because they are working with the same hardware manufacturer that made the Omnia (the phone is based on the “Accord” architecture). They cannot reveal what company is because of an NDA, but in 1 month it will be announced.
The Antenna is for digital TV in Europe and Asia.
It has only 3 buttons for now because it’s a PROTOTYPE.
Wow, thanks Tony, that’s all I could say about it.
When we have signed all the contracts and pre-production has begun, we can announce our manufacturer. Until then, the risk of industrial sabotage is quite high, so we find it better to keep it confidential. Sorry! :(
no standard headphone jack, no service.
no keyboard, no camera flash. Front facing camera is kinda cool but other than that, just another iPhone wannabe.
Resistive touch screen? Isn’t this the same kind of screen the MDA and Wing used? It was horrendous! What a joke.
I also can’t understand why these cell phone manufacturers refuse to put flashes on phones.
How much RAM?
A lot of the feature complaints are because you people don’t understand technology. camera flash takes a lot of battery power, and the tiny LEDs are really useless beyond 2 ft. Better photos can be taken with environment lighting anyway. As for resistive screen, I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt and see how it feels after it comes out rather than comparing it to older devices using the same technology name.
I hope it’s available for the US market though even if none of the carriers officially brings it over. Prepaid plans are getting popular in this recession and it would be great to buy one without a 2yr contract & high data charges (I would use wi-fi mostly).
Does version 1.5 include Sense UI?
ONE has 256Mb of RAM according to blog.geeksphone.com
Someone will find a way to hack the phone to have HTC’s Sense on it.
Why do the pix show a back-facing cam but it says it’s front-facing.
because it’s got both O.o
@ ahmed
Your a tit.
Rob, I love the redo you did on the GeeksPhone One. I love how you blogged your opinion, and an honest one at that, and then later admitted that perhaps you may have been wrong, and told us why. That’s being authentic and no one can not resist honesty. Keep up the authentic blogging. I can’t wait for your next post on the GeeksPhone One. Cheers!
Hey does any one see any resemblance with the omnia from lg? or is it just me?
“will upgrade to 2.0 Donut when released” Donut? I thought Android 2.0 was codenamed Eclair o_O?
looking for driver to pc and samsung galaxy