With Google dropping its first Android-based phone, the G1, on the market today, the galaxy’s search giant almost made the online music/mobile music market a bit more interesting by preloading Amazon’s MP3 download store software onto the device. But today’s press reports leave me thinking that this is barely a music-capable mobile phone.
G1 users will be able to start paying to download from Amazon’s six-million-plus song catalog of DRM-free, 256kbps-encoded-songs whenever they’re in range of a WiFi connection. (Apparently, the OTA download dream is still, as yet, unrealized. In my opinion, that’s just as well.) Downloading songs from Amazon to the G1 via a WiFi connection seems pretty straighforward. After that, the user then can synch the songs, via USB cable, back to their primary computer. Not clear if there is some sort of auto-synch capability. Actually hearing the music they buy on the device might be a bit more problematic.
Why? Because there are some odd things about this one. According to this story and thisstory , the device doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack or stereo Bluetooth capabilities. Not to be too picky, but I find a 3.5mm headphone jack kind of important for listening to music acquired from the “cloud.” On a portable device. Another strange decision: apparently the G1 sports a mere 1GB of internal storage. (It reportedly does have an expansion slot.)
As a much anticipated product designed, or at least advertised to be a serious disrupter to the established mobile phone market and touted by the press in the past few months as a serious iPhone competitor, the Android G1 still seems more like a great idea only partially realized.