Justifying The Cost of The Nexus One
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 |So after all the hype, the Nexus One came to fruition yesterday to fan fair as well as haters. From what I’ve gathered reading the blogs, tweets and comments of others is that the main gripes from the haters so far is:
- Not enough innovation on the OS side. New UI but mostly the same bells & whistles as current Android devices.
- Way over priced.
Now I may be a little biased at this point due to me needing a new device right now so I’m going to purchase this handset and I know I’m going to love it. But, as to the cost, I think that is best summed up in my own words.
I am used to purchasing my phones at full cost for the past six years. The main reason I’ve done this is I don’t like contracts. Although I’ve used T-Mobile USA for more than five years, I don’t like the idea of an ETF looming over my head in the event that I want to go to another carrier. At times I have purchased handsets used. Like my G1 (RIP) which I purchased for $315.00 last March off of Ebay. So I will not be signing a contract to purchase the Nexus 1 and I know that $530.00 is a lot of coin for a phone.
But, it should be realized that this is more than a phone.
We all know that the device can play music. All forms of music which is more than I can say for many music devices. (Android devices are the only ones I’ve seen that will play the .ogg format. I’m sure there are others out there but I haven’t used them.) The device comes to you with a 4GB card for storing music. Oh, it plays videos as well so let’s call it a media player. A quick search on Ebay and I found a SanDisk Sansa Fuze 4GB Black MP3 Player with a buy it now price of $52.99 and the shipping is free but if I want it fast, it’s an additional $4.99 so that brings us to $57.98.
It’s also a navigation device with free GPS service. I know that the G1 provides this and while on a trip to Eastern Washington I discovered that the GPS will still work even without a SIM card in the device. Granted the only maps available without service are any that are cached on the device but I was still able to get my coordinates for free. I can only assume that the Nexus One will also provide this service for free as well. (I had a Blackberry Curve and Telenav wanted $15.00/month for GPS service.)
So, to Ebay again, I found a Tom Tom XL 340.S for $119.95 + $9.75 for shipping. This device has a bad review stating that it’s memory couldn’t handle the first update so that’s pretty lame IMO. That brings our grand total to $187.68.
The Nexus One has a 5 mega pixel camera. Ebay. First item. A New Argus DC 5185 5 meg camera with a whopping 32MB of storage (lol) and the thing takes AAA batteries. If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to purchase a camera that uses regular batteries you know that they usually don’t last very long. Near as I can tell this camera doesn’t record video and the view screen is only 1.5 in so the Nexus One is a better camera it seems. Price: $38.24.
Last and perhaps most importantly, the Nexus One is a phone/internet tablet. So real quick I found an LG CU500 UNLOCKED QUAD GSM PHONE with a buy it now price of $43.95 and a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet with a buy it now price of $100.00 plus $6.85 shipping.
I’m not including sales tax as I live in Oregon and we hate that shite. lol
So in this example, the total is now $376.72, this is a far cry from $530.00 but let me justify it by putting it this way:
I’m on the internet a lot. Almost an unhealthy amount. This has made me guilty of loving instant gratification so I want & need all of these devices but I not only want them all right now, I want them all in one package. So to me, I’m paying an additional $154.00 to get them all in one and right away. Plus it will have the cool UI and I’ll be the envy of at least some of my friends.
So the device is more than a phone and although the G1 & My Touch devices can pretty much do the same things right now… I need a new device and I have a suspicion that this device will do all these things faster than the aforementioned devices since it has the 1 gig Snapdragon processor.
That being said, the device may be expensive if you purchase it unlocked but I feel it’s absolutely worth it for what the device truly is, how it looks and it’s performance. Plus, you’re not tied to one carrier. Yes, I know that it only supports the AWS spectrum for T-Mobile USA but that’s not my point.
One final thought, when the iPhone came out back in ’07, it cost more than $600.00, you had to sign a two year contract with AT&T and you couldn’t insure it nor purchase it unlocked from them or Apple. They still sold over a million of them and the device didn’t support IM or MMS for a loooong time.
The Nexus One already supports those features and many, many more.
