T-Mobile G1 Quick Review

i’m really hoping to see some hands on videos with android soon.

So I just went down to look at it. I’ve been intrigued for months. Google phone? Full internet? On the cheapest carrier (and as a result the carrier I use)? woo hoo!

Well I finally got to see it in person.

First impression? I was disappointed. When you pick up an iPhone, it’s substantial. You feel like you are holding a $200 phone. Maybe it’s the metal. Maybe it’s the glass. I don’t know. You pick up the G1 and you may as well have picked up a toy. it’s all plastic. Even the screen seemed plastic.

The phone flips open ala the sidekick to reveal a keyboard. Although slightly better than the sidekick style of opening where you would feel like the screen was just going to fall off, this was not much more impressive. Again, it’s more about feel here, but it felt cheap. It was a very quick, jerking motion, with no smoothness to it. The buttons on the keypad, on the outside of the phone, and the rollerball all seemed to work fine, but still had that “I’m going to break before you even leave the store” feel.

The salesman came up to me and began to show me the features of the phone on one that he had in his pocket. Despite the weeks of e-mails I got from T-Mobile warning me to pre-order so I could get one before the Second Coming of Christ, the G1′s seemed to be in ample supply, and this salesman was giving me the full court press.

Alright, so on to the features.

Initially slated to release with over 50 apps, it only had about 13. Some highlights included a barcode scanner built into the 3MP camera that would tell you on the fly where you could get a product cheaper. Scanning the G1 box sadly produced no hits, but amazon had a great price on the new Indy DVD. While I saw the usefulness of something like this, I wanted to see the meat and potatoes.

He went on to show me Google Maps, “This comes with something NEW called ‘Google Maps’. You may not have heard of it, but soon everyone will be using it. ” While I grinned through my teeth, the salesman tried to show me the street view functionality moving the phone around to have the street view move. This seemed a bit jumpy but did work.

It also had features like “Taxi” which upon a press of a single button would find the closest taxi co and call you a cab, and a quick mixology reference to tell you how to make any drink… ho hum…. on to the web .

The web browser loaded very quick, and did show “the REAL internet”. The zoom function seemed a little wonky, having to either press magnifying glass icons or using a magnify box that would zoom into a particular area. Since there is no multitouch functionality on the G1 this was as close as you were going to get to an effective iPhone style zoom. It was a bit wonky and not the most responsive, but once you got past the bit of jumpiness of the zoom, the pages loaded easily. Sadly even the salesman had yet to get the hang of the zoom feature yet, giving me reason for pause.

He offered to take my picture and put it on the internet with “your new G1 phone”. I said “Thanks but no. I have enough pictures on the internet for now, thanks.” and left.

All in all, I know I’m being a little hard on the poor G1. Still, at $179 for a two year contract, or the simply outlandish price of $400 without a contract, I would expect something better than what appears to be a rushed prototype of what could have been a much better manufactured device. I’m sure Android is going to be the mobile operating system of the future. I’m sure there will be more open source apps than you can shake a stick at.

Until they come up with a better device though (Word is several other phones are already in development) I’m hard pressed to pay iPhone prices for a device that just doesn’t measure up. Drop the price mark by $100, and I’m in. Heck, make it an even $100 and I’m there. This phone is simply not worth what they are charging.

I just got this phone yesterday and it took me about 15 minutes to fall in love with it. Never really considered a phone much more than something to talk to others on but that is now changing.

The casing seems at first to be a little cheap but I have seen nor experienced any issues and seems tougher than it first appears. The fact that the phone is open source is great and there are already a multitude of apps out there for it some far more useful than others in a general parallel of the same development as what we saw when facebook opened their API.

The touch screen I found very responsive and yes it does fall short of the two touch ala iphone but I considered that a bit superfluous anyway. The fact that the G1 has an honest to god keyboard is outstanding instead of the frustration of targetted punching the touch screen.

quick navigation all around with the back, home, and scroller buttons is awsome. I am 100% happy with this phone.