Google’s rumored smartphone has gotten official approval from the Federal Communications Commission. According to documents from the FCC, the Nexus One will support the North American 850 and 1900 MHz GSM bands, as well as T-Mobile’s 1700 MHz 3G network.
While some rumors were calling for an unlocked and unsubsidized Google device that would be sold directly to customers, The Wall Street Journal today reports that Google is in talks with T-Mobile for that carrier to sell the phone.
A Google spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
Kevin Burden, device analyst for ABI Research, says today’s news of a possible deal with T-Mobile turns the whole thing on its head.
“Up until this morning, I still believed that this was a test phone for Google. I really believed that they might be using this phone to jog the minds of their best developers,” Burden says, adding that the hardware currently being reported is truly cutting-edge.
“This phone has a 1 GHz Snapdragon in it. There’s not another phone on the market that has a 1 GHz processor. Who knows what kinds of applications Google has in mind for this phone, but if they put a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor in there, the applications have to be pretty intense.”
Burden had originally thought that an unsubsidized Nexus One might represent a kind of showcase phone for the Android platform, which wouldn’t have been in direct competition with Google’s partners, if only because of the high price it would fetch.
However, if Google pursues the T-Mobile route, Burden says that’s an entirely different path altogether.
