T-Mobile G1 Review

This is a review of the so called Google Phone by T-Mobile G1 made by HTC, this is the first phone to run the Android OS which was designed by Google. 

I m going to split this article into two parts, first a review of the actual hardware and second is the software itself.

Hardware:- 

Although this is the "Google Phone" but it is actually built by HTC, after more than a week of using it i have found a few things regarding the hardware itself and i will be giving a brief tour in this section. 

The G1 comes in two colors either in black or white (my review is based on the black), it has a slide form factor where the screen slides out and a full qwerty keyboard is hidden under it. I find the slide mechanism to be quite unique as you push the screen it will swing out slightly to the left before it gets into position. Overall the motion is very smooth and feels pretty solid. 

The phone sports a 3.2inch capacitive touchscreen just like the one on the iphone and in fact it feels very good too, i would say it is very close to being as good as the iphone touch screen. It is also a quadband 3g phone with wifi and GPS and at the back there is a 3 mega pixel camera. 

On the front of the phone you will see five physical buttons. They are the menu button, the answer and end call button plus the home and back button. In between the home and back button there is a trackball which allows you to navigate instead of using the touch screen. I find this very helpful as it allows me more control of the phone, it is especially useful when you are surfing and trying to hit a very small link with the trackball you are less likely to mishit. Overall the track ball feels very good and very similar to the blackberry ones. 

One feature it does lack is it does not have a font mount camera so there is no ability to do video calling.  

On the left hand side of the phone there is a volume button and a SD card slot, on the right hand side there is a dedicated camera button. On the back there is the 3 mega pixel camera, but as with all smart phones the camera is poor to say the least and suffers extremely badly under low light conditions. A mini usb port is also located on bottom of the phone.

The overall feel of the G1 is pretty solid and it sits comfortable on your hands, the sliding keyboard mechanism is very smooth but you can hear some squeaks when you press slightly hard on the screen. The 3.2inch touch screen is very bright and sharp and volume of the loud speaker is very good perfect for listening to music. 

The full qwerty keyboard is very solid too, its gives you a pretty good tactile feel while you are typing on it. But one major downside is its poor battery life quoted at 300mins talk time, while using it for the good week now i find myself having to charge the phone every night. 

Software:-

The major hype about the G1 is always going to be the Android OS, after all this is the first mobile OS developed by Google. And personally i think Google has made it on the market and it is as good as the OS X mobile too.

Android is very different from other OS as it is totally open source and the possibility for developers is infinite. The OS itself is very smooth in fact try not to think of it as a phone but a mini computer running a little modified version of ubuntu. 

Out of the box you get your google apps such as gmail, google maps, google IM client, google contacts, google calender and a browser and the first thing you do is to log in with your gmail account and it will automatically sync the information to your phone. 

There are 3 home screens where you can put your short cut for apps on it too, and jumping between the 3 home screen works just like how you would on an iphone by flicking left and right to access different screens. The flicking motion is very smooth just like it on the iphone. 

On the bottom of the home screen you can see a tab, as you flick it up it opens a window where all you applications are installed. 

There is a dedicated youtube app, there is really nothing to say about it. It just works.

One cool feature about the Android OS is the Market, this is like the Apple App store. You can download many useful apps to games either paid or free. Because Android is open source there is a very large community of software designers writing apps for it and i can only see this to grow bigger in time. There are also some google widgets such as the google search bar and the clock, i believe there will be more to come in the near future. (you can freely move these widgets to anywhere on your home screen).

This is no video player out of the box but because of the nature of the Market there are already video player apps out there for download and it is free too. There is also a music player which supports playlist and syncs with Windows Media Player too. But because there is no 3.5mm jack you will have to use the mini usb headphone provided which can be a downer for some. 

The main feature of this phone is the service provided by google, over the cloud computing has starting to become mainstream. As mentioned before when you start using the phone for the first time you must sign in with your gmail account. This allows the phone to synchronize all your emails, calender appointments and contacts straight to your phone. And if you edit anything on your calender it will automatically be sync with the google server too. Emails are also directly pushed from your gmail account to your phone. 

As of today, google maps in the UK also supports street view this is a very welcomed addition to all UK users. 

My overall impressions are very good, Android OS is very clean and easy to use. The ability to customize theme is fun, GPS works very well with google maps and locates your position very quickly and emails gets pushed flawlessly. As mentioned before using the OS is more like using a computer then a phone which is very unique. 

Although there are many good points but the abbismal battery life and no MS exchange support is a major let down for business users. But as a first attempt by google this is a major step forward in the mobile OS world and it does make me wonder where will Windows Mobile go in the future. 

I can only see Android will become a market leader in the near future due to the nature of open source i expect it to grow very rapidly soon, it will be very interesting to see what will be ahead of us. 

Review By 

Andy C 

19th March 2009