The Google T-mobile G1 phone will come out next month, but will it really make shopping any easier than the iPhone already does? The new phone will include Google’s search capabaility, YouTube functionality and a host of other tools to help consumers share information with their friends and communicate with businesses. Anything new here? No, the iPhone has all of this.
The biggest commerce tool that the G1 is touting is the ShopSavvy and CompareEverywhere applications. These are designed to help users do comparative shopping in-stores by scanning scan the UPC code of a product with their phone’s camera while they are shopping, in order to compare prices from online merchants and nearby local stores in real time. This kind of thing exists to some extent through offerings like Slifter, through which a consumer can do a comparison search on an item.
The G1 will have Google Maps to help locate these stores while out on the go, but again, so does the iPhone. And while the T-Mobile G1 does come pre-loaded with a new application developed by Amazon.com to help users purchase MP3 downloads directly to their phone, with only 1G of storage, the iPhone’s new 8G offering is a much better device for those that want more than a couple of songs.
New Google phone doesn’t offer much more than iPhone
