T-Mobile G1 Review

Introduction:

Remember when the iPhone was going to revolutionize everything?  It was so new, so shiny, so fast, so pretty…and so closed.  Sure, it was eventually cracked, but every time there’s an update it has to be re-hacked, and as of now the 3G still hasn’t been solved.  Apple created a wonderful piece of hardware with an extraordinary operating system, but forgot to make it consumer friendly.  Ok, they didn’t forget, they wanted control over everything and alienated a lot of would-be buyers in the process.  Love it or hate it, there is no denying that the iPhone was an amazing feat of technology but until Apple embraces the whole developer community, not just who they want at the time, the iPhone will never reach its potential.

In steps Google.  The company headquarters may be separated by just nine miles, but the company philosophies are light years apart.  Where Apple looks to control every aspect of the business in order maximize profits, Google has embraced user generated content and makes next to nothing from the general public.  They open up their doors to innovation from anywhere, and then figure out how to make it profitable later.  There is no more perfect example of this than Android, the search giant’s mobile operating system and a shot across the bow of the wireless industry.  And the best part is that it is free.  No licensing fees.  No developer fees.  Nothing.  Anyone can download the entire source code from the website and, with a little innovation and creativity, port it to any device they like.

Of course no movement can succeed without the backing of the industry.  Realizing this, Google created the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and quickly brought on board some of the biggest names in the wireless world.  Japanese operators KDDI and NTT DoCoMo signed up, along with China Mobile, Telecom Italia, Sprint and worldwide operators Telefónica and T-Mobile.  Samsung, LG, Motorola and HTC represent manufacturers, and big name component companies such as Qualcomm, Intel, NVIDIA and Texas Instruments are members.  Innovative software companies like eBay, Esmertec, Packet Video and Nuance help round out the who’s who member list.

Ok, so what does this all mean?  It is a forward-thinking, consumer-first vision for the future, backed by companies that can make it happen.  T-Mobile USA and HTC have brought the first Dream to reality and released the G1.  As the first device running Android it has had lots of expectations heaped on it, too many most likely.  Android is not about a device, but rather a mobile computing environment and more importantly a philosophy.  Still, as the launch device first impressions are critical and the G1 has a lot to live up to.

Included in the box you’ll find:

•    Li-Ion battery
•    AC adapter
•    USB data cable
•    1GB microSD card
•    miniUSB stereo headset
•    Leather carrying pouch

Design:

The G1 is an odd device.  At first glance it has a huge 3.2” capacitive display with a few hard buttons below and trackball navigation.  The screen actually arcs open (more on that later) to reveal a large, 5-row QWERTY keyboard.  The overall design is very minimalistic though, so much so that finding the microSD slot took us a bit of search (its unmarked on the bottom left, if you’re wondering.)  It’s definitely on the large side, but it still manages to feel pretty good in the hand.



You can compare the T-Mobile G1 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The phone currently comes in two hues, black and bronze (brown,) and will be available in white later this year.  The screen dominates the front, and the small area below is houses the navigational keys and trackball.  This portion actually curves out a bit, giving the G1 a protruding chin.  It’s a small but noticeable design measure, and makes typing more comfortable.  The HVGA (320x480) screen is gorgeous.  It is large, easy to read and videos look great(when you can play them, again, more later). Like the iPhone it uses capacitive technology, meaning that you must use a bare finger to operate it.  It is plenty responsive, though without Multi-Touch and a glass screen it doesn’t feel quite as good as Apple’s.  Usability isn’t an issue; it takes a second to get used to, but afterwards we had no problems.  A quick tap doesn’t always open applications, you have to hover for the slightest second, and this is most likely on purpose so as to reduce accidental screen presses.

In true Google fashion the navigation keys are very simplistic.  The trackball sits in the middle (it has been shown to be the same one used on BlackBerry devices) with a rectangular menu button above.   To each side sits two round keys; Send and Home to the left, Back and End to the right.  They offer good feedback and there is no doubt when they have been pressed.

The left side of the phone has a slightly raised volume rocker near the top, and the aforementioned microSD slot stealthily integrated into the chin.  The slot is somewhat hard to get open, and recessed enough that those with short nails may have problems getting the card in and out.  The right side simply features a camera key just before the chin break.  The miniUSB charging/data/headphone jack is covered on the bottom of the phone.  The back offers more minimalism.  The 3.2 megapixel camera is set next to the small speaker.  TThe words “with Google” are screen printed in the middle; that and the T-Mobile and HTC logos are the only markings on the phone.


The screen slides to the right to reveal the large QWERTY keyboard.  Uniquely it does not simply slide, but rather moves in an arcing motion.  We’re not sure if there is any advantage to this, we certainly didn’t see one, but it is cool nevertheless.  It is a very heavy slide, but not too much so.  Animations are generally as smooth as can be, but it does take a second for the screen to re-orientate when open and closed.  The delay is less than a second, and nothing like delays we see in other operating systems such as Windows Mobile.


The keyboard is very big, one of the better keyboards we’ve used.  Keys are large and well spaced, they are a touch shallow but there is no wondering if you’ve pressed them or not.  Unlike devices such as the Bold and Touch Pro, the G1’s keys are staggered like you find on a real keyboard, making typing more natural.

We’ll be honest, while there are some nice design touches such as the chin and staggered keyboard the G1’s design doesn’t wow us.  Perhaps this is intentional, after all Android is about the OS not the hardware, but it seems rather pedestrian for such a highly anticipated device.  That said, the design is a good one it appears HTC went with usability over wow factor.  For as much as the iPhone and Diamond have pushed touchscreens into the forefront, giving up a keyboard is still not a sacrifice everyone will make.  One thing we will chastise HTC for is the lack of a 3.5mm jack, though this comes as no surprise as only the Touch HD has ever had one.  Another thing is that the phone is creaky.  It’s not loose or anything, but there are a lot of plastic on plastic creeks as we squeeze various areas.  Short of this there is nothing really wrong with the G1, we just wish there was more.  Some rumors have the Touch HD being loaded with Android and rebranded the G2, which we would be perfectly fine with.

Interface:

There’s nothing really groundbreaking with the Android UI, and that’s in part what makes it so good.  We feel confident most users can pick it up and go, comfortable navigating between screens and apps.  The best way to describe it is a mix between the iPhoneand BlackBerry OS, yet you’d never think it is a rip-off of either.  The homescreen displays a large analog clock, as well as a few icons such as contacts and My Faves.  Icons can be moved around, added and removed from the homescreen, and the screen can actually be slid to the left or right to reveal more space.  Left is empty and we’d imagine most users will use it as a launcher area.  Right has a Google search bar, as well as more real estate for program shortcuts.


Of course, all of this is customizable.  The clock and search bar are widgets that can also be moved, added and removed.   A picture frame is also available now, and we’d expect more widgets to soon appear.  Individual contacts, bookmarks, playlists, Gmail labels and folders can also be added to the home screen, though we couldn’t easily figure out how to rename the folders (open it, then hold your finger on the title bar for a second or two.)

From the bottom of any page the user can drag open the full menu, in which each program has its own icon.  We like the interface, and feel that it addresses the clutter issue the iPhone has while still allowing quick and intuitive access for any user.  For the neat freaks you can have zero icons and widgets, and for those who want everything up front you can fill three screens with whatever you want.

Similar to RIM’s BlackBerry key, the Menu button brings up context menus that vary depending on location.  Menus are much less convoluted than RIM devices, consistent with Android’s ease of use mantra.

Similar to the Samsung Instinct, notifications are displayed with an icon in the status bar and the user can drag the area down for more detail.  Where the Instinct simply has a star to notify the user of missed notifications, Android has different icons to specify what kind of event was missed (email, text, etc.)

One major gripe we have is lack of an onscreen keyboard at the moment.  There are times when we want to keep the phone in portrait mode and just tap out a quick message without having to open it, but we expect this will come soon enough.  If Google never closes this hole (which we’re sure they will) no doubt the developers will step in and do the job.

The touchscreen is integrated well into the OS, though it is important to note that Android will run on non-touch devices as well.  Just for fun we navigated using only the trackball and buttons and think Google really has a great OS on their hands not just for feature devices, but for mid-range and low-end phones alike, and we fully expect to see it emerge on even non-cellular devices.  While it has some maturing to do, the structure is solid and very well thought out.

Phonebook:

Hopefully you trust Google; if so things are great.  If not, well then there’s not much sense in using Android.  When setting up our device we signed into our Google account (required) and within a few minutes all of our contacts were synchronized to our phone.  There is no desktop sync program, but as long as it works we prefer the cloud managing our information.  Honestly, we get lazy and don’t plug our phones in as often as we should so auto-sync just makes life easier.  Importing contacts to Gmail is easy from both Outlook and Address Book, so there is no real reason to have a desktop client.  That said, we’re sure someone will develop one in the future.

The phonebooklayout is great, and again very similar to Samsung’s Instinct.  There are four tabs at the top; you are taken to Contacts (everyone) by default but Favorites (speed dials), Call log and Dialer are just a press away.   Unlike Windows Mobile, Android lists contacts alphabetically by first name.  When on either the homescreen or contacts list the user can begin typing and the phone will match to the contact list by both first and last name.  Entries can be filtered by groups (which are set up in Gmail) and you can even choose to only sync certain groups instead of your entire list.


There is a plethora of information that can be stored with each contact.  There are several phone number, email and postal  address labels, and if there isn’t one to fit your needs you can create a custom one.  Not only can you save an IM name, but you can associate it with the appropriate service (options are AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo, Skype, QQ, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) which allows you to send an IM directly from the contact, assuming Android supports the service.contact.  You can add company information (including position) and if none of this is enough you can make a note for them.  What you cannot do, however, is add birthday and anniversary information.  We hope to see this in the future.



Have a crazy ex, creepy guy you met at a bar who won’t leave you alone or just someone you don’t want to talk to?  Android gives you the option to send a contact’s calls straight to voicemail.  It’s a curious and somewhat cynical feature for sure, but at the same time pretty cool and just another sign that Google has its finger on the pulse of the modern user.

The in-call management is fantastic as well.  The user can either put a call on mute or on hold, and can activate the speakerphone or a Bluetooth headset.  Swap Call easily manages three-way calling, and there is a Merge Call option for simple conference call management.   When on a conference call you can even put certain callers on hold while still talking to other ones.

Voice dialing is handled by Nuance, which bought VoiceSignal last year.  The software is excellent as always.

Organizer:

Again, you’re going to be trusting Google here.  Upon signing in our Google Calendar was synchronized, and additions via the phone upload back to the web.  The process is as painless as it is seamless.

The calendar itself is full featured but pretty standard for a smartphone.  The user can view in Agenda, Day, Week or Month view and adding appointments is as you’d expect.  There are options for all day appointments as well as recurring events.  Presence and privacy options are available, and descriptions can be added for more detail.  It would appear that you have the option to sync with multiple calendars (presumably Google Calendars) but after telling it we wanted to add a calendar the phone did nothing.  Android has been criticized for only allowing sync with one Google account, but if you could add multiple calendars it would certainly help the situation.


There is a basic calculator with some advanced functionality, but there are no notes, tasks or voice recorder.  We’ve said this a lot already, and will be saying it again, but these functions will no doubt be added down the road either by Google or third party developers.

Messaging:

Video, music and internet are all well and good, but messaging is still the most used feature on cell phones (besides, you know, actual calls.)  The whiz kids at Google are well aware of this, they themselves offer a great SMS toolbox, and the G1 definitely does not disappoint on this front.  All the standards are there- SMS, MMS and email- as well as several IM clients and integrated Gmail.

Text and picture messaging, as you’d expect, is threaded.  The interface is simple and straightforward, and you can attach pictures and audio files.  AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger come preloaded on the G1.  The clients are good, though with large buddy lists it took a long time to update presence.


Gmail is of course preinstalled on the device and when you sign into your Google account at setup your Gmail gets pushed.  There is an email client as well, which lets you check other POP and IMAP accounts, including additional Gmail ones.  There is no Exchange support as of now, but there are no doubt several developers working it as you read this.  The interface is good, in fact in some ways we prefer the standard email interface to the on-device Gmail one.  With Gmail you have to scroll through the entire message to get to the reply options, which is a pain for long conversations, whereas in the general client they are static buttons on the bottom of the page.


As we noted earlier the keyboard is one of the better ones we’ve used.  The keys are flat and only slightly raised, but still easily distinguishable by feel.  The travel is shallow but good enough, and we were not only quick but very accurate from the get-go.  An onscreen keyboard would have been nice at launch, but we know it is coming.


Connectivity and Data:

The G1 is a quad-band GSM device that runs at up to 7.2Mbps on the down link and 2Mbps up.  The US version has HSPA on the 1700 and 2100 MHz bands, the former band is shed for the European variant.   For those not blessed with 3G coverage from T-Mobile yet the G1 offers Wi-Fi as well.  Bluetooth 2.0+EDR is available, though only the HSP and HFP 1.5 profiles are supported.  We’re a bit perplexed as to why they didn’t offer more support, especially A2DP, at launch.


We tested the unit in an EDGE market, and all things considered the speed wasn’t that bad.  Pages rendered excellently and the overall browser interface was good.  Safari still tops our list, with Skyfire and Opera Mobile 9.5 close behind, but the Android browser (Chrome lite?) definitely belongs in the discussion.  We prefer Opera and Skyfire’s double-tap zoom to Android’s magnifying glasses, but we like Android’s overview better.  When in full view the user can grab the little four way arrow in the bottom right and the page smoothly transitions to overview mode.  As you drag the box over portions of the page they enlarge, and releasing zooms in on that area.  It is nice for larger pages, such as PhoneArena.


With no desktop sync everything is handled in the cloud.  Contacts and calendar sync over the air in both directions, and email is pushed directly to the phone.  To the user the experience is seamless.

Camera:

There is no way to sugar coat it; the camera sucks.  Pictures turned out badly in all lighting conditions.  Colors were washed out, images were hazy and grainy and fine details were fuzzy at best.  As you can see from one of our sample shots the camera just plain messed up.  There really is nothing good to say about the camera other than that Android gives users the option to geotag pictures with GPS location information.  There are no settings, what you see is what you get, and what you get is terrible.  We’ve seen better image quality images from VGA phones, the G1’s performance is flat out unacceptable for a 3.2 megapixel module with autofocus.   Furthermore, right now there is no video capture.  Developers, get working!




Multimedia:

The G1 is a bit thin on multimedia, and developers need to step up to the plate quickly.  The music player is good enough; it is the only phone we’ve tested besides the iPhone that properly read both ID3 and album art from all six of our test albums, and the interface is intuitive.  It’s nowhere near as pretty as Apple’s interface, but it gets the job done and is certainly not ugly.  AAC, AAC+, AMR-NB, MIDI, MP3, WMA, WMV file formats are supported.


Options are sparse, you really only get Shuffle and Repeat, but over the air downloads from the Amazon MP3 store make it more robust for sure.  The library is excellent though, on par with Apple for sure and much better than we’ve seen on recent HTC devices.  The miniUSB headset jack is a setback because the included headphones are nothing special and adapters are cumbersome.

There is no native video player, which is a big omission.  We grabbed Video Player from the Android Market.  It's a good, basic solution that plays MPEG4 or 3GPP videos with H.263 and H.264 video and MP3, AAC or AMR audio.  Rotating the device switches between landscape and portrait mode, and videos looked crisp on the large screen.  Like stereo Bluetooth, we're not quite sure how Google approved the launch without such a basic function but this is a perfect example of how developers will plug the holes.


G1 features a stand-alone YouTube client, though it is not as impressive as the one found on HTC Windows Mobile devices.  The functionality is the same, but we prefer the layout of the WinMo client.  In this mode videos play full screen, and looked good even over EDGE.  Over Wi-Fi they were crystal clear.


If Android is going to dethrone the iPhone then it needs to strike at its core.  The iPhone is after all the best iPod ever, and right now the G1 cannot compete.  We look forward to developers bringing new features such as A2DP and a better music and video player, but it’ll be a later piece of hardware, not the G1, which takes down the iPhone.

Software:

The G1 runs on a Qualcomm MSM 7201A processor at 528 MHz.  It has 192 MB RAM and 256 MB ROM, and ships with a 1GB microSD card.  It’s not slow, that’s for sure, and animations are smooth and slick.  For instance, the wallpaper is actually a widescreen picture since there are three pages to the homescreen.  You only see the full image by swiping from the left page all the way over to the right, but the picture isn’t simply cut into three segments, one for each page.  Instead the icons/widgets move at a faster rate than the wallpaper.  It’s a bit hard to describe, but a very cool effect that shows off the graphical capabilities of the phone nonetheless.

Google Maps is the default maps application, and runs extremely well.  Everything is incredibly smooth, and it’s pretty much like a desktop experience.  The G1 has built in GPS, but it didn’t work all that well for us.  When it was able to determine a location at all it was usually off by a mile or so.  We’ve never experienced this with Google Maps on Windows Mobile, OS X or Palm so we’re surprised to see it on the G1.  Hopefully some software optimizations will fix this shortly.

Like Apple’s App Store, the G1 and Android really come to life with the Android Market.  Here the user can download programs that extend the capabilities of the phone.  Since Google has released everything for Android’s source code we expect to see some amazing apps in the future.  There will eventually be paid applications, but until the end of the year everything is free.  Some developers are taking advantage of this and giving free applications that simply point to paid ones, others- such as EA- are holding out on developing until they can make money, but there are hundreds of applications available just a week after launch.  Some are definitely more useful than others, but with Google’s “everyone is welcome” policy we expect to see applications that will appeal not only to the masses but also to niche crowds.  This will eventually allow users to truly make their device their own, and in the end that’s what it’s all about.

Performance:

Callers were impressed with the G1, and gave us an 8.5/10 rating, with their main complaint being we sounded a touch nasally.  On our end we’d give it a 7.  Voice reproduction was good and the caller was clear, but the volume wasn’t as loud as we’d have liked and even in a quiet room we sometimes found ourselves trying to turn it up, only to find we were on the highest setting.  Though it didn’t affect sound quality, there was also a lot of hissing in the background.

Talk time is rated at an impressive 5.8 hours for GSM and 6.8 hours for WCDMA.  Standby is 319 hours on GSM and 402 for WCDMA.  In our tests, using GSM, we were actually able to achieve a stellar 7.1 hours of talk time.  Even after a day of very heavy use we still had 20% battery life when we went to bed, so we feel the battery is plenty ample.

Conclusion:

Android is impressive, and the G1 is a nice piece of hardware.  Still, we can’t help but feel that both Google and HTC could have done more for a launch device.  When we step back and look at the bigger picture the future is bright, very bright, but in this day and age we want it now.  Simple things like a video player, stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5mm headset jack are missing.  Overall the phone performs well though, and it is merely the first step in what we foresee as the next true revolution in wireless.