The famed Google phone is now a reality, having taken form in the shape of T-Mobile's G1, a device developed by HTC and often referred to as the HTC Dream. People have been dreaming of this phone for quite a long time, it seems. Since the open source(INFO) Android platform was announced a year ago, the industry landscape has changed quite a bit. Even Nokia, having bought the remainder of Symbian from its co-owners, is planning to make its OS and user interface freely available to manufacturers. Up until now, though, Android(INFO) has mostly been a lot of talk. We're here to fix that today. How does the G1 stand up to other smartphones and media centric devices? It has the slick looking UI and a responsive touchscreen display that people crave so much today, but it also features things like an autofocus camera and an honest to goodness hardware QWERTY keyboard. That's a lot to look forward to, but as a 1.0 version device on a brand new OS, there are bound to be things that just don't work as we would hope.
Physical Aspects
From a design aspect, the T-Mobile G1 is fairly simple and plain looking. It has very clean lines, and features no real design flourishes other than the simple bend at its base, where the main cluster of buttons and the trackball are located. That bend in the otherwise bar shaped phone is a bit of an oddity. It appears to offer no real ergonomic or aesthetic benefit, but seems to get in the way of users with smaller hands when it comes time to slide open the G1's 3.2" capacitive touchscreen(INFO) display to get down to business with the G1's QWERTY keyboard.
While certainly pocketable, the G1 is not exactly a small phone. At 117mm x 55mm x 15mm (4.6" x 2.2" x 0.6") in size and weighing 159g (5.6oz), it is a substantial device. It feels solidly built, and the display's sprung slider mechanism moves it around with a reassuring thunk as it nestles into place.
The miniUSB port on the bottom of the phone has a nicely designed cover, and the microSDHC card slot is tucked away in the body of the phone's bent chin, where it can be opened when the display is slid out. The camera shutter button is a two stage affair, letting the camera gain focus lock with a half press and take an actual photo with a full press. The camera, which resides on the back of the device, looks nice, but tends to get mucked up with fingerprints too easily.
The keyboard is also a point of contention. It is spacious enough, but the keys don't offer enough travel, are not domed enough, and probably would have been best made out of a softer, grippier material. The keyboard works, but it is far from being the best on the market today.The design of the G1 will not be a clear cut winner for most people. It is a bit too plain looking, has a keyboard that is only acceptable, and requires a miniUSB to 3.5mm headset adapter (not included) to be used with regular stereo headphones. The trackball, however, is quite nice, and the display is large, bright, and very responsive. HTC didn't knock one out of the park with the G1's design, but they certainly did enough to get the job done.
Core Functions
You might not believe it from the T-Mobile G1's pessimistic signal strength indicator, the phone does a pretty good job of latching on to a signal. In fact, even with the phone reporting a single bar of signal strength, the G1 gave us what is probably the clearest call audio we've heard from a phone this year. The speakerphone is also good, though the inbound audio isn't as good as what the remote party hears. The problem that many people will have with the G1 will be battery life. With fairly light use that includes no WiFi or Bluetooth, the G1 is probably only going to survive a day and a half between charges. The phone is rated for 5 hours of talk time and 5.4 days of standby time officially.The contacts system on the G1 is tightly integrated with Gmail's contacts. You can import contacts into the phone by importing them into a Gmail.com account, which will allow them to sync down to the phone. There is no way to move contacts over directly from a PC, which is somewhat absurd. The contacts system itself works pretty well, though, so once in place, most users will find the system powerful and easy to use. One feature that we don't recall having seen before is the ability to mark a contact so that any calls from that person are immediately sent to voicemail, bypassing the ringer completely.
There are no real profiles on the G1, just the ability to change the ringer volume and switch to vibrate or silent modes by nudging the volume control up or down. There is, however, a nice speaker independent voice dialing application that worked pretty well for us. It can be activated by holding down the green call button for a second or two. That's a good thing since the phone has no support for speed dialing.
The T-Mobile G1 supports threaded SMS and MMS quite well. The dedicated Gmail email client will probably make most Gmail users quite happy, too. The regular POP/IMAP email application on the G1 leaves much to be desired, though - especially for IMAP users. There is no management for IMAP folders at all, meaning that all folders have to be subscribed to on the phone. It also doesn't do a good job of showing which folders have new messages in them. A person could get by using the email app, for sure, but it is far less than ideal. The IM client on the G1 supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, and Gtalk - but only one at a time.We were mostly happy with the data support on the G1. T-Mobile's HSDPA(INFO) 3G network, where available, generally provided 400 to 500Kbps data speeds, even on weak signals. The phone also supports HSUPA(INFO) (though T-Mobile USA doesn't yet), as well as 3G on the 2100MHz band used in Europe, and the phone's quad-band GSM/EDGE capability will make sure that the phone works in most parts of the world - even if only at EDGE speeds. WiFi on the G1 was pretty painless, and generally managed throughput of around 1100Kbps.
While we really liked the Bluetooth setup and configuration system, we were really sad to find that our Motorola S9 stereo Bluetooth headphones wouldn't work with the G1 due to its lack of support for the A2DP profile. Worse yet, though, is that the G1's voice dialing system can't be initiated from a Bluetooth headset. On top of that, the phone's ringtone doesn't get routed through the headset, it still rings on the phone. We are hopeful that the G1 will receive a future over the air update that will address some of these shortcomings, but nothing has been promised so far.
Multimedia / Apps
The T-Mobile G1 is a pretty capable multimedia device. For starters, it has a 3 megapixel autofocus camera on board. The camera is a bit slow to focus, has no real configuration options, and lacks a flash completely, but still manages to take pretty nice photos when the light level isn't too low. The camera has no out of the box ability to record videos, but 3rd party developers could well deal with that issue in the not too distant future. Either way, we expect that we'll see better support for cameras in future revisions of the Android platform.If you can look past the need for a 3.5mm jack adapter and the fact that the G1 doesn't support Bluetooth stereo, the music player application is quite nice. The touch interface is easy to navigate, and you can sync music from a desktop PC using any MTP(INFO) compatible application, such as Windows Media Player or Winamp. It is worth pointing out that the album art did not copy over properly during our tests, even though the app supports it.
You can load up the G1 with a number of different music formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, AMR, WAV, MIDI, and even Apple's AAC format (but only without DRM). If you prefer to buy your music while on the go, the built-in links to Amazon's MP3 store are sure to please. The application makes it easy to buy individual songs or entire albums using your Amazon.com account.
There is no video player built into the G1, but there are some 3rd party solutions out there. There is already a free video player application available on the Android Market, Google's answer to the iTunes store. However, there is no need to download any new apps to get YouTube support since there is a decent YouTube application built into the G1.
One of the apps on the G1 that people will use the most is the web browser. The Android browser is based on the same Webkit core that powers the Nokia S60 browser, Google's Chrome, and Apple's Safari. The Android browser does a great job of displaying websites, and it supports having multiple windows open at once, but is a bit weak when it comes to zoom control. While Safari on the iPhone and Opera 9.x on Windows Mobile devices can intelligently zoom based on the user double tapping on a block of text or an image, the Android browser requires use of some fairly primitive on-screen zoom buttons. They are not very elegant, but the browser is still otherwise great for accessing web content without being tied to a desktop or laptop computer. Just as Gmail and Gtalk are tied tightly into the G1, so are Google's Calendar and Maps applications. The Google Calendar system on Android lets you synchronize with not only your own online calendar, but also with those belonging to friends (with their permission) and any public calendar on the system. It makes it easier than ever to keep track of who is where and when, and the Google Calendar Sync application for your PC will let you keep Google Calendar in sync with a copy of Microsoft Outlook. But while the calendar support on the G1 is good, there is no built in app for managing tasks or to-do lists.
The Maps application on the G1 is just plain fantastic. It can be accessed from most anywhere in the phone where an address can be found, such as a contact, and has all of the view modes you would find on the full blown Maps website - including Street View. A built-in electronic compass function can be enabled for Maps if you download and configure the free "Spare Parts" application from the Android Market.
There are a few other assorted apps pre-installed on the G1, like a calculator and an alarm clock, and even T-Mobile's MyFaves app. Thanks to the Android Market, it is easy to get new apps - just find one, tap install, and give it a few seconds to complete. It's that easy. While the G1 doesn't have that much storage built in, it is easy enough to add storage by inserting a microSDHC(INFO) card. Capacities of 16GB are currently available, with 32MB expected in the future.
User Interface
For a new platform like Android, the user experience is everything. Apple raised the bar with the iPhone, and now having just a cool looking device is no longer enough - high end phones today must have slick user interfaces that pack plenty of wow factor to entice consumers. In that regard, Google and the other members of the Open Handset Alliance(INFO) that back the Android OS have done a pretty good job.The UI on the T-Mobile G1 is visually appealing. It has a slick iPhone-like user interface that allows users to move on-screen items with a finger tip, and it does so in a very responsive way. Screens and menus appear to have a spring to them that is visually very appealing, and the icons and on-screen graphics are all very clear and pretty.
The center of an Android based phone is the home screen. Users can easily customize the home screen with graphics, widgets (like the clock), and shortcuts to menu items, bookmarks, or even contacts. The home screen is actually 3 screens in one, and users can swipe left or right to switch virtual desktops. If you wanted to, the home screen could be covered in icons just as it is on the iPhone. But the nice thing is that it doesn't have to be that way, and if you want a picture of your kids or favorite pet on the phone, you can do that.
Beyond the home screen, two of the most important UI features on the G1 are the main menu and the status bar at the top of the screen. The main menu can be brought up by either tapping on or dragging up its tab on the home screen. A similar dragging motion will let users pull down the status bar to get an easy to read view of events that need to be addressed, be they received messages or a notification that a downloaded program has been installed.
In general the Android UI is easy to use and intuitive. Lists are simple to navigate, and a simple on-screen tap activates most all features. The dedicated menu button provides quick access to application specific tasks, such as adding a new appointment in the calendar. Where there are too many options to list as buttons, Android apps offer users a "more" button that brings up a scrollable list of tasks that can be performed. Another great feature of the G1, as it pertains to the UI, is the trackball. In spite of the phone being finger oriented, the trackball can be used to accomplish pretty much everything that one could do with a finger on the display, which keeps the phone easy to use with one hand.
Where that one-handedness breaks down a bit is text entry. There is no way to enter text on the G1 without flipping out the display and tapping on the hardware keyboard. Some form of on-screen input would have been nice. The text input does offer auto-correction to some extent, and it can even handle auto punctuation as well, just like on a BlackBerry. Long tapping on the screen provides users with access to select all, copy, cut, and paste functionality, while the trackball, when used with the shift key, can be used to select only certain bits of text for those operations. The keyboard's search key can be used with letter keys to launch apps quickly, and the shortcuts are user configurable.There are some problems with the UI, though. For starters, none of the default apps on the G1 seem to allow users to select multiple items at one time for tasks like delete or move. This is painfully obvious in the email app, but also applies to contacts as well and other apps as well. The keyboard's delete key can't be used to easily delete an email or contact, either, which seems strange since the space bar can be used as a "next page" key when navigating lists in those same apps.Then there are other features that simply seem incomplete. For example, it is possible to add a new folder to the home screen, in which app shortcuts or bookmarks can be placed. That's a great way to organize. The problem is, every folder is called "Folder" and cannot be renamed. But I do approve of the way that the folders, which pop up over the desktop, can be left open when the user slides over to one of the other home screen views. Another minor issue is that when an application is removed from the phone, a simple process, any shortcuts to it that were on the home screen's desktop remain, even though they no longer function.
In general there are a number of features on the phone that still feel very new and somewhat incomplete. The email application being the most obvious, perhaps. But overall the system is very slick and user friendly, and we have hopes that Android's open source nature will lead to rapid fire updates for the G1 that will address these problems over the next few months. It isn't as polished as Apple's iPhone UI, but even the 1.0 release of the Android system found on the G1 is sure to intrigue, and please, a lot of people.
Conclusion
Whether you view the T-Mobile G1 as a success or not will depend largely on your expectations. If you are a hard core smartphone user that travels in enterprise circles and expects to find a huge assortment of software available for your device, the G1 will not be for you. At least not yet. But if you are more of a T-Mobile Sidekick type person that is just looking for a fun phone that offers good calling and mobile internet access, then the G1 could well be the perfect cell phone for you.
This is especially true if you are one of the Google faithful that uses that company's services for things like mail, calendaring, IM, and maps. The G1 ties in tightly with these Google services, and will likely support others in the future.
The G1 hardware might not be as slick looking as an iPhone, but the UI has that same kind of look and responsive feel that will please users. And if you are heavy into messaging, nothing beats a hardware keyboard. Even the G1's average QWERTY keyboard puts any on-screen virtual keyboard we've used to shame.
Even though we love the new OS and are pleased that there are no real deal breakers in the G1, there are enough small issues and 1.0 type features that keep us from giving the G1 our highest rating. But with that said, the G1 is certainly a device that deserves your consideration, especially if you are in the market for a mobile internet device that also happens to be a very solid phone.
You'll find a gallery of sample photos shot with the T-Mobile G1's 3 megapixel camera on the following page.
