Wednesday, October 22, 2008
T-mobile G1 aka Android
So I got one at 8am today. Here are some of my random notes.
First, the iPod can suck it. I can install any app I want without having HTC or T-mobile or Google's blessing. There is a full backlit qwerty keyboard of happiness, no pecking on the screen and having your phone guess what you meant to type. The battery is replaceable. The memory is an upgradeable micro-SD that will take up to 16GB.
It's a nice phone. I really am happy with it so far. It looks nice, feels nice in the hand, and is truly a competitor the the iPhone.
Some random notes:
The slide out mechanism is super slick. The keyboard is beautifully backlit so you can use it in the dark. The speaker is really good quality and pretty loud, I've been jamming to some tunes. Youtube looks better than it does on my computer, go skateboarding dogs. Bright beautiful screen quality. It has a cute scroll wheel ala blackberry perl, which I haven't found a good use for yet but should be good where you need to be more precise than a touch screen allows. ShopSavvy is just an awesome app, it makes me happy. AccuWeather looks pretty and works well too. Streetview compass mode is kinda cool, I was out on the sidewalk looking like an idiot earlier. Came with a nice little slip case to keep it from getting scratched up in your pocket, and some headphones with a pause/play button on the cord. The market store for apps works beautifully. Oh, and the browser is quite good. It's fast, renders pages well, even complex ones, and you can drag around to view. For zoom I do like the iPhone interface of pinch/double tap better, but the popup zoom in/out toolbar works better than I expected, really quite usable.
Negatives:
No headphone jack, have to use a usb headphone or a converter, which means you can't charge and use headphones at the same time, crazy. The green phone button brings me to the call log and I have to tab over to the dialer, it should bring me straight to the dialer, maybe I can figure out how to reprogram the buttons. The menu key on the qwerty keyboard is pretty useless as you can use the other bigger one instead. I think battery life could be an issue, bluetooth, wifi, and satellite gps were off by default which I can only assume is to save battery. No visual voicemail. No flash for the camera. Not enough apps out there yet. Even though it has wifi you can't use the wifi for voice, only data, which means no free wifi minutes with T-mobile @home. It doesn't take video, not sure if this is a hardware or software limitation. No support for LEAP authentication for wifi. No VPN, no ssh, no vnc (I assume this will get done fairly soon).
First, the iPod can suck it. I can install any app I want without having HTC or T-mobile or Google's blessing. There is a full backlit qwerty keyboard of happiness, no pecking on the screen and having your phone guess what you meant to type. The battery is replaceable. The memory is an upgradeable micro-SD that will take up to 16GB.
It's a nice phone. I really am happy with it so far. It looks nice, feels nice in the hand, and is truly a competitor the the iPhone.
Some random notes:
The slide out mechanism is super slick. The keyboard is beautifully backlit so you can use it in the dark. The speaker is really good quality and pretty loud, I've been jamming to some tunes. Youtube looks better than it does on my computer, go skateboarding dogs. Bright beautiful screen quality. It has a cute scroll wheel ala blackberry perl, which I haven't found a good use for yet but should be good where you need to be more precise than a touch screen allows. ShopSavvy is just an awesome app, it makes me happy. AccuWeather looks pretty and works well too. Streetview compass mode is kinda cool, I was out on the sidewalk looking like an idiot earlier. Came with a nice little slip case to keep it from getting scratched up in your pocket, and some headphones with a pause/play button on the cord. The market store for apps works beautifully. Oh, and the browser is quite good. It's fast, renders pages well, even complex ones, and you can drag around to view. For zoom I do like the iPhone interface of pinch/double tap better, but the popup zoom in/out toolbar works better than I expected, really quite usable.
Negatives:
No headphone jack, have to use a usb headphone or a converter, which means you can't charge and use headphones at the same time, crazy. The green phone button brings me to the call log and I have to tab over to the dialer, it should bring me straight to the dialer, maybe I can figure out how to reprogram the buttons. The menu key on the qwerty keyboard is pretty useless as you can use the other bigger one instead. I think battery life could be an issue, bluetooth, wifi, and satellite gps were off by default which I can only assume is to save battery. No visual voicemail. No flash for the camera. Not enough apps out there yet. Even though it has wifi you can't use the wifi for voice, only data, which means no free wifi minutes with T-mobile @home. It doesn't take video, not sure if this is a hardware or software limitation. No support for LEAP authentication for wifi. No VPN, no ssh, no vnc (I assume this will get done fairly soon).
