Google Phone – Emergence of the Nexus One

The Google phone is real. In the spirit of the holidays, Google said Saturday on its mobile blog that they’re “taking dogfooding to a whole new level” by first distributing the new phone to Googlers around the world. The phone, called the Nexus One, will be part of a “mobile lab” where Google employees will help test the latest technology.

Localytics provides mobile app analytics for top mobile applications on Android phones, as well as BlackBerry and iPhone. Localytics captures very granular data on behalf of developers, allowing them to dynamically drill down into user segments. Mining the same data reveals when and where the Nexus One is already being used.

Localytics first detected the Nexus One on November 25. Then it appears the phone was given out to a larger number of lucky Google employees before they left for the weekend; usage ramped-up significantly on Friday, December 11, and continued through the weekend.

The Wall Street Journal and others have reported that Google may partner with T-Mobile but also plans to directly sell the Nexus One online, unlocked, rather than through wireless operators. The traffic patterns detected by Localytics so far seem to bear that out.

• The heaviest usage has been on T-Mobile in the US, over both Edge and UMTS (3G)
• All usage on AT&T was over Edge; inline with reports that 3G support is limited to the 1700 Mhz band used by T-mobile in the US.
• The Nexus One is already appearing on networks outside of the US, with traffic coming from countries including Australia, Germany and the Netherlands—and some of those connections are 3G.
• The most recent devices are running the ERD72, ERD56C and ERD65 versions of Android 2.1.
• Verizon and Sprint subscribers will likely have to wait as all usage so far has been over GSM-based operators.