Free Android Phones at College Experiments

Google has initiated what it terms as an experiment with select universities & colleges as they give away free Android phones to students in Computer Science courses.

Each school will get 20 HTC Android phones according to The Wired Campus but it did not clarify if these would be And Dev 1 G1 Dream phones or possibly Google Ion Magic phones.

The free Android phone giveaway are at these initial set of 11 schools:

• Harvard University
• MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Wellesley College
• Mills College
• Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
• Ball State University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Indiana University
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• University of Michigan
• University of San Francisco

Google stated it is giving away the free Android phones to allow students with no programming experience to create applications for sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Google then this collaboration with the colleges is an experiment which could be expanded to other schools in the future if it proves successful.

I think this is smart move to plant the seed into the future engineers to get accustomed to and grow into developing for Android.

It seems similar to Apple’s non-giveaway but subsidized approach to get college students especially those in Art & Design accustomed to Macs.