This article is more than 1 year old
First Android phone to retail for $199
Cheaper than the iPhone?
The Googlephone will cost $199 when it lands on T-Mobile in the US next week.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reports that customers will be required to sign up a service contract of unknown duration with T-Mobile in order to bag themselves one of the Android-based talkers.
This suggests that the phone will initially appear only in the US on pay-monthly tariffs and not – as some would hope – on a pay-as-you-go package.
It’s also been rumoured that the Android talker, which is manufactured by HTC, will be called the T-Mobile G1. Until now it had received several unofficial titles, including the HTC Dream and Googlephone.
Some of the G1’s design features have already trickled through, including a BlackBerry-esque trackball for on-screen navigation and slide out Qwerty keyboard.