A year ago I blogged about Rogers bringing Android handsets into Canada and I was wondering about Rogers/Google pushing out ads over the OS and the cost of the handsets. A year on, it seems that my fears of ads being pushed out over the OS were a bit unfounded (for the moment) on the part of Android/Google – that “honor” goes to Apple and iPhone4 – and the fretting about < - it is at this point, about 9:15am April 13th, that I was told that I am being laid off - >< - Resume April 14th -> the cost of handsets being about the same as those from other providers.
Well, the handsets are certainly expensive if you want to keep up with the last and greatest, but if you are willing to wait for handsets that are a few months old, thanks to the currently fragmented state of Android, you can get some nice deals on unlocked handsets. Having the Google flagship Nexus One available cheaper than what the carriers are offering their flagship devices (locked). Having Wind Mobile offer data only plans hasn’t hurt things either.
All this change has made the idea of ubiquitous computing (together with rocket/net sticks and 3G netbooks) move from the geek space to the sheik space quiet readily. In another year, this might be so common, to the point where people will start seeing what mobile data can do for them in their everyday lives and once that happens, maybe we’ll actually start seeing “smart” use of mobile technology in Higher Ed and in Div IV.
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