Product review - Tmoblle G1

[rhaskins]

Picked it up on Monday. My son has had one for 3 weeks and it has survived, so I made the plunge. It is a great phone.

I have been thru almost all the Blackberries, disliked the keypad on the Pearl a lot. We got a Storm in last week at work. While it is a good, clean looking phone, it is a bit slow. Almost universally no one liked the keyboard very much, but it is functional (what is with that click when you type?). I have messed around with the iPhone, and have had some humerous situations with people with long fingernails.

But the G1 has almost everything I want in a phone. I like the slide out keyboard. After you use the interface for a little bit it becomes very natural to slide your finger around to find everything and launch apps. The web browser is great, bomeronline comes thru perfect. the 3G in my area (Minneapolis and surrounds) is great. I spend more time with YouTube than I did before. For me, typing is much easier. The apps from the market place download very fast and install fast. The twitter client is a little shakey, but the other apps are fine: Shazam, flashlight, movies, Barcode scanner. I also use Christmas snow globe, why I don't know. and the Noise generator app is in the same class: it makes a fart noise. Must be the 5 year old in me.

I got the app TouchDown that grabs my Exchange 2007 mail from work, and after registering it, it works pretty good at fetching my work email. As can be expected, gmail and google work flawlessly. The mapping features are easy to waste a lot of time with. GPS and Cell tower locators work fine with gps being more accurate.

I really like the apps marketplace, the open source aspect to Android. I keep finding new stuff to try out. Who cares if Google now knows everything about me? What's to know?

Biggest drawback is power consumption, it can draw the battery down in a few hours of 3g stuff like YouTube and constant internet usage. I keep it tethered to power sources like my car and laptop a lot to keep it topped off. Turning of 3G and going to 2G doesn't make much of a speed hit, but saves battery time. Keeping off gps also saves power.

Right now the phone has a big novelity factor for me, but it is convenient. I see it as a laptop replacement for me on road trips. I am looking for a remote access client for windows, and I will be all set. I won't ever have to go into the office again.

YMMV

Rick