Dan Hesse sez Android "not yet good enough" for Sprint brand
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 25th 2008 4:33PM
posted Oct 25th 2008 4:33PM
[Via Android Authority]
posted Oct 25th 2008 4:33PM
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haha
IDIOT!!!
i think we all need to calm down with this android stuff. yes its interesting but the fact of the matter is its one phone who has not even been in peoples hands a week yet. lets wait until we start seeing the user complaints. before we say thatthis is the best thing since sliced bread. i wouldnt rush to put out an adroid phone either. tmobile needed this just off the fact they had a useless lineup phones. at&t kept getting all the good stuff. i agree with hesse for now.
Have you played with one? I have and I'm pretty impressed so far with it. UI is nice and snappy, well laid out too. For a 1.0 product I say nice job Google!
That's like saying Adrian Peterson isn't good enough for the Cincinnati Bengals...
LOL I get it! That's actually a good analogy :P
No, The iPhone was the most exciting thing to happen to the Mobile Phone market since iPhone. The thing with Android is, It's for Us, WE'RE excited about it. the Geeks, and that more for it's Potential then it's current state. And in that case, he's right. Let the platform mature.Just a smidge. Google isn't apple. They can sell to the techies, but for the general consumer, the G1 is just another complicated phone.
Agree with Duscrom to an extent. It is true that us geeks are more excited about the G1 phone than normal people. One of the reasons for that is no widespread commercial push.Compare the marketing push by Apple before iPhone release T-mobile and Googles effort. The phone has been pushed to geeks like us for now more so than to the normal customers. I am pretty sure they will eventually push for a wider market,once they are ready. Anyone who has been watching google knows that. They know how to take it slow.
As for Sprint too good for Android . Laughable. Whatever makes Hesse sleep at night. After all, Sprint is losing about a million customer per quarter and trying to get rid of their nextel network. In this market almost nothing is too good for Sprint. They released Instinct and claim that to be iPhone killer. And Sprint is too good for Android. :)
I agree with Hesse. Android in its current form is not much to write home about. It has potential but right now it's just a plain ol' OS.
I don't think he knows this is sprint he's talking about. This is the company that can't do anything right. I think he was confused: Android is too good for sh!tty sprint.
I don't know about other areas, but here in Atlanta the only people with sprint are those who don't know better, are cheap (& obviously don't care about decent phone service), or have horrible credit (the later being the most prominent).
I think we're missing the point of his statement. How can he claim something's not good enough for the Sprint brand when it has the lowest customer satisfaction and has just about the crappiest service everywhere??
while its always fun to take shots at sprint. lets remember something. sprint has been improving for awhile. they usually offer the latest pretty much after telus with respect to smartphones.
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/10/20/sprints-csr-response-time-skyrockets-to-first-in-recent-survey/
so lets not keep taking shots at sprint. although im in canada and not a customer i do notice the change the company has undergone.
verizon is the one that has been looking bad with continuing crippling phones when everyone has stopped. slowwwwwwwwwwwwnessssssssssssssss to release the latest smartphones.
u could say the same about at&T with their iphone fanboyism they have ignored the diamond so far which is pretty ridiculous.
so outside looking in. i say sprint looks like the best right now. alltell is disqualified since they are being absorbed. tmobile 3g is still fresh and while its nice they launch the g1 it seems like they are doing the same thing with their g1 love and have not released a diamond or touch pro.. i dont recall even seeing a leaked shot of either of them coming. so technically they are becoming at&t 2 if they go iphone fanboy route and only keep their eyes on the g1
@ Riley Freeman
You really have no idea what you are typing about do you? To say Sprint is currently is the best is ignorant. Yes Verizon, which has the best coverage, does cripple their handsets, so much so that I may actually drop them for another carrier, but for who? T Mobile has the worst coverage, AT&T doesnt have Verizons coverage or a decent plan, IMO and their flagship device, the iPhone, lacks many basic features. Sprint is going with WIMAX for their 4G plans, which is laughable. I was with Sprint for over 3 years and I dropped them fast for Verizon over 4 years ago. Currently my parents have AT&T, my brother has Sprint and my other brother has T Mobile, so I think I'm qualified to make an educated assessment. You on the other hand are a Canadian subscriber, so it would be hard for you to know the exact limitations of each. Besides, I don't count Sprint's response time as being a true indication of quality, as you have argued.
I think carcomptoy has a very good point, but aside from that, I don't think it would hurt to put out one solid android device and see how his customers respond to it...
I agree carcomptoy and duscrom. Android does need some polish, and they do need to work on their ability to sell it to everyday consumers who want sthe newest thing because everyone else has one so it must be good. The geek crowd (no offense, I'm a geek myself) is all over just thinking of the potential of its expansion. But a normal everyday person will kind of be like "its cool, but not like the iphone".the fact that this sprint guy doesn't even want to put an android phone up right now proves it does need some touch ups. That being said, let's hope that Google(not 3rd parties) steps it up and makes this operating system the best it should be, and let third party developers make it the best we want it to be.
I'm a current Sprint subscriber...been with the company thru thin and thin...given Dan Hesse's track record and Sprint's recent turn for the better. I would give him and the company the benefit of the doubt when it comes to this decision concerning an Android phone. I think they don't want the same kind of ambiguous reception that the Instinct got. For all the sales and kudos the Instinct has received, there had been plenty of returns and complaints.
Do the people that say that Android needs polish actually own the phone? I doubt it.
Ive worked in cell phones for a few years, I have used EVERY smartphone OS (S60/iPhone/WM/BB), and android by far seems to most like a desktop experience for me.
No crashes, no memory leaks(awesome memory management), very few bugs(most issues are network related), and its 1.0!!!
How much more polished do you expect a BRAND NEW OS to be??
Google G1 is over rated, too many issues and not to impressive for me.
I wonder how many of you guys have used one.
Man. I'll take a G1 over the Instinct any day. That was a pretty dumb move.
To the guy who said "its for us the geeks" I resent that, I have no problem getting ladies... But he is right to the average customer the lack of an on screen keyboard and the lacking cam options are huge.. Those are bigger than free phone to pc tethering, VoIP and all the other hi tech stuff we do. Android itself is ready for prime time tho it has more to offer the average customer than a sidekick or a blackberry. Its not there yet for business customers yet just like the iphone isnt. So hes wrong for saying it but I wouldnt give up a touch pro or diamond for a G1. And i doubt the average consumer would give up their instinct.
As a current Instinct user I would only consider an Androind handset if it offered everything my Instinct does and more. If there is no Navigation, TV, Radio, and a good alternative to Live Searcher then I will hold off until there is which is what I believe Sprint is doing. Hesse's choice of words also could have been a little better as it sounds like he is bashing Androind as well as being a little arrogant.
I'll toss in just a couple of comments:
The first thought that occurred to me is this: Sprint must be feeling behind its project schedule in releasing what it thinks will be a worthy Android phone, and this is possibly a backhanded way of making that delay seem less their fault.
The OHA, responsible for cooperatively developing Android as spearheaded by Google, is something Sprint participates in. Maybe they feel that the group isn't going their way. Standards groups tend to get very, VERY political on the insides. When you've got a bunch of financial competitors trying to hammer out an agreement, there's always someone who feels the final agreement is more in the others' favor than it is theirs. (Even, sometimes, if in reality it is more in their favor. There's the matter of estimation and interpretation that gets pretty irrational at times, and you can't always see how the future will play out.)
By all accounts I've read collectively, this phone is more of a geek's phone than a mainstream phone. It will be for the moment. The G1's design doesn't isn't perceived by the market as being as flashy-appealing as the other phones on the market which are literally shinier. This was built to be a bit more robust, just judging from the care that went into the swing-arm alone. And matte surfaces show fingerprints less, but aren't in vogue right now. Bunches of small choices of function over form here and there add up.
What will create excitement for Android is if (1) developers adopt it as their favorite pet project like crazy and (2) handset manufacturers decide that the open, for-free, highly customizable OS is too good a steal to pass over and hence eventually there are more handsets that have trendier looks. Part (1) seems like it'll happen, and actually HTC's releasing a function-over-form handset (which still looks at least pretty decent, IMHO) can potentially give developers something they can beat on a lot more as they test it out everywhere. Part (2) remains to play out but if (1) happens it becomes more likely. Remember when Palm was just an itty-bitty techy darling and geeks were developing for Palm OS like crazy? That's what's needed if this is going to fly. (What's needed for it to continue in the long run is for it to not repeat the mistakes Palm has made, enumerated elsewhere on engadget and at length. But we're speaking about beginning, not yet continuing, so...)
The other possibility to keep in mind is that Sprint may be trying to position itself a little better given that it wasn't the first out of the gate with an Android phone. You can call it sour grapes. Or you could actually just call it less than subtle market competition. If, say, about six months from now there's a new Sprint Android phone that is actually running a version of the OS that is a lot more customized and polished, you'll know what this guy was actually hinting at: he thinks Sprint and whomever they're partnering with (lots of manufacturers) can do one better, flame wars be damned. I might be wrong and it might actually be empty posturing, because I'm just speculating here...
One OTHER thing to consider is that, with Sprint somewhat in trouble regarding their customer service, is that yes in fact they DO need to release a top-flight better-than-G1 phone just to pull EVEN. You don't have apparently sub-par customer service and keep your customers with devices that are EQUAL to the competition, you ensure you have the best toys there are out there and let your customers flaunt their fancier gadgets. That game only works as long as you can keep pushing out the fancier newer gadgets fairly quickly, so Sprint won't have too many months to sit back on their heels before Dan Hesse's comments have to be backed up with something street-cred-worthy. Or at the very least substantiable rumors of something.
(And you see the very same principle in reverse with Verizon. Not only do they NOT have the latest phones, I think they've established a point where they MUST wait before adding new phones. Consider it this way -- they've tried to become the market leader in quality of service. If they don't test the living hell out of every device and vett it very carefully before it hits their network, it could POTENTIALLY -- not likely but POTENTIALLY -- be the thing that causes just enough complaints that they're no longer in the vaunted overall #1 spot. So, yes, I think they're quite deliberately slow. It comes down to engineering trade-offs: do you value pushing higher tech devices out the door faster and try to keep the network up as best you can, or do you value your network so much that you become a little more neophobic than your competition just so that you can be a little surer of yourself when it comes time to actually talk to the customer on the phone? So what? Sprint made one choice and Verizon made another! T-Mobile made yet another. So will all the other players. Woohoo! As customers, just know which part you value more and engineer your choices accordingly.)
What he means is, "Android is still in its first stages. It's very buggy and we simply can't afford the customer service calls when people inevitably have problems with it."
ding ding ding!! You have the correct answer right there buddy!
What are you talking about? That has to be one of the ugliest phones that I have ever seen!
The fact that many of you STILL confuse 'Android' and 'G1' as one in the same is ignorant enough.
Doesn't matter what you think of the hardware, that is up to preference.
Sprint is talking about Android, the OS. It's just PR-spin. It's an open-source software! It's a piece of clay ready to be shaped and molded... it's not that Android isn't ready for Sprint... Sprint just isn't ready for Android and the most positive argument they can make to their customers is to trash it by saying it's not ready.
T-mo has been on point with updates and the App store (people complain about no video-support... and then one day after release there's a free video player in the App store).
Having owned WinMo phones, I can already see the flexibility here.
Android the OS is great but it doesn't have enough apps yet, plain and simple. There is no argueing with that. Now in about 8 to 12 months when sprint release an Android phone there will be all the apps you could want and whatever phone it is will go over much better than the G1. Right now the only people with android phones are people that what to be able to say "I had android first!". I'm sorry but I side with sprint on this one, and the PR spin of making it seem sprint is too good for it will probably go over great with the average consumer who only knows that the G1 doesn't even have a soft' keyboard yet.
G1 owner here and I gotta say: many of you here making claims of Androids faults and mis-steps probably haven't actually seen one. Likewise to those of you bashing the hardware.
ow, I've never used an iPhone so I can't compare it to that. However, that said, the G1 is the single best phone OS I have ever used (in comparison to Palm, WinMo, and various other OS's like the LG Dare). Does it have it's fair share of bugs? Yes, but in my last week of use with the phone I have experienced fewer problems than I did in my first week of the LG Dare. To say that the Android OS is "not ready" or buggy is almost a flat out lie as there is very little wrong with the phone.
As for the G1 hardware itself: it's a dream. People call it ugly, cheap-looking, fake, but really I can't understand a word of it. My bronze G1 is one of the most solid phones I have ever felt and nothing about it feels cheap. The screen is a dream to use (compared to the laughable LG Dare screen) and it has a nice weight to it that makes it feel far from fake. As for it's looks, well thats really in the eye of the beholder, however I will say this: the photos don't do it justice at all. I was thrilled on it's looks when they first announced the phone but upon actually getting my own and holding it in my hand I have been converted. I love the G1's stylings and I hope the G2 keeps it.
Now for the whole Sprint thing, clearly this was a stall on their behalf as to not only downplay the importance of such an OS until they get their own phone but also a way to boast their own line up. That said, the CEO is just plain wrong. Sprint is not ready for Android, rather than Android is not ready for Sprint. He can deny it all he wants but a simple comparison between their "iPhone killer" the Instinct (my girlfriend has one) and the G1 will prove what a far superior platform Android is...
Anyways, thats all I have to say about that.