The T-Mobile 3G network speed is speedier than AT&T’s, and the Android operating system, while a bit rough around the edges, is a terrific start for an open-source smartphone standard. First things first: The G1, built by Taiwan’s HTC and offered exclusively by T-Mobile in the U.S., isn’t going to win any design awards. The phone looks as if it was manufactured by the Soviet military. It’s a heavy, black brick, with a screen that swings away from the underlying keyboard with a sturdy thump. If you replaced the large LCD screen with a standard touch-tone keyboard, it’d look just like an Ericsson cell phone from 1997. Underneath that screen are four round buttons — call, home, back and power/terminate call, as well as a small plastic trackball and a large “Menu” pad. Volume toggle switches are on one edge, and a camera-shutter button is on the other. A 1-gigabyte MicroSD card, which houses media files but not applications, is tucked under the buttons, held in place by a tiny plastic door. You can swap in another MicroSD card with up to 16 GB of storage. On the back are the camera lens, a small but surprisingly loud speaker and the enigmatic words “with Google.” The battery is replaceable, though I had to stop when I tried to get the back cover off because it felt like I was about to break something. The keyboard is solid, fully functional and a lot easier to use than the iPhone’s touchscreen virtual keyboard, which is tough for anyone with adult-sized fingers. Physically, the G1′s worst feature is the fact that, as with jellyfish and other primitive animals, there’s only one hole for everything going in and out. The screen itself is bright and crisp, and though a bit smaller than the iPhone’s, it packs in the same resolution and hence looks sharper. Battery life is about a day of regular use, as is the iPhone 3G’s — and unlike the iPhone, the G1 charges quickly with any standard USB 6-to-4-pin cable. Now for the network. It’s no accident that T-Mobile is the first of the major U.S. carriers to jump on the Android bandwagon, since its coverage is the weakest. Access to the fast 3G network is only available in a couple of dozen cities, and even regular voice communication is spotty. When 3G access is working, it’s great. Side-by-side comparisons of the G1 and an iPhone 3G showed the G1 to be much faster in loading Web pages and playing YouTube videos. (Like the iPhone, the G1 has a dedicated YouTube application, but clips on both look blotchier than they do on a PC.) Voice calls were fine, comparable to calls made using AT&T, which uses the same GSM protocol. I prefer the cleaner-sounding, more reliable CDMA standard that Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Alltel use, which is one reason I haven’t gotten an iPhone. Finally, where the G1 really shines is with the Linux-based Android operating system and resulting applications. They’re just as good as the iPhone’s in most respects, if a little less intuitive. Web pages look terrific whether in portrait (closed) or landscape (open) mode — better than they do on the iPhone, in fact, even though both browsers are based on the same underlying code.
The G1 can also buy and download songs directly from Amazon’s online music store, though as with the iPhone you’ve got to be connected to a Wi-Fi network rather than just the 3G cellular network. Album covers showed up fine using this method. The phone’s built-in music player is functional without being flashy. It handles a wider range of formats than will iPods or iPhones, including WMA, Ogg and Real Audio files, though it won’t play Apple’s encoded AAC files from the iTunes Store. With regard to Wi-Fi access, the G1 handles it smoothly and without a fuss. I got onto my home network in about five seconds, and downloads were fast and uninterrupted. (I wasn’t able to compare the iPhone’s Wi-Fi speed.) T-Mobile will give G1 users free unlimited access at its public Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide. Instant-messaging similarly is initially tied into to Google Talk, but also handles AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. So what’s the overall user experience? Very good, actually. The sheer ugliness of the handset grew on me after a while — something that’s homely but useful is bound to be charming. Getting online and having a full Web browsing experience without having to turn on a PC was a heck of a lot of fun. For a geek like me, being able to flicker through Wikipedia while lying face up on the couch was heaven.
Here are some fun facts about the T-Mobile Google Phone:
1. 80 percent of G1 owners browse the web daily.
2. Four out of five G1 owners download apps at least once a week from the Android. On average, T-Mobile G1 customers have each downloaded more than 40 applications from the Android Market.
3. An average G1 owner consumes 50 times the data of the average voice-centric phone user.
4. Among T-Mobile customers who have purchased the G1, roughly half have traded up from a basic handset.
5. The majority of T-Mobile G1 owners use Facebook and YouTube at least once a week.
6. Half of G1 customers also access Wi-Fi on a daily basis.
The above-mentioned trivia can be explained by two things: the increased availability of newer Android apps and an awesome browser, with capabilities that come close to matching those of the iPhone. As I’ve said before, armed with the right form factor and a near-perfect browser, average consumers would happily make a smartphone their Net device of choice. The good news for T-Mobile is that they have a network that can handle the traffic coming from the G1 Google phone. The T-Mobile network can cover more than 230 cities, reaching some 207 million Americans.
