I recently had the chance to get my hands on the G1 from T-Mobile for two weeks.  With it, T-Mobile, Google and HTC seek to challenge the ever-popular iPhone and its big brother the 3G.  I have to say, the device and its operating system Android give the iPhone the best run I’ve yet seen, with a ton of features I’d love to have with me every day.

With the G1, T-Mobile offers a phone that can stand up to Apple. (Picture courtesy: T-Mobile

Read on for my G1 review.
The G1 is a touchscreen phone with a slider for a keyboard.  The slider took some getting used to, because it kind of felt bulky in my right hand.  Once I got used to it though, text input was a breeze.  The phone has 5 buttons on its face: phone, home, back, end and a scroll nub.

Android is the G1’s operating system.  You can read more about the technical details on Google’s own page here. It’s part of the Open Handset Alliance Program.  From the site, it essentially allows users to create “Apps without borders, that are created equal, can easily embed the web and run in parallel.”  What this means to the end-user like you and me is that there are a lot of cool things that you can do with an Android phone, that you wouldn’t be able to do with a regular cell phone.

To get at those apps, the Android Market was created.  It’s essentially the G1’s answer to the Apple App Store on a much smaller scale (the app store is massive, while the market is just big).  It’s a fairly robust shop, and recently just started accepting paid applications so the majority of programs are free.

In terms of added functionality, I found a couple of apps that I really liked.  Flashlight was a simple program that cranks the screen brightness to maximum and gives an all white background with one tap.  A featured app in the store was Shop Savvy.  It used the G1’s camera to snap shots of bar codes and gives you a list of prices and locations for shopping comparisons.  Toggle Wi-Fi was a program that would let you skip the menu system and turning Wi-Fi on or off became a one-click endeavour.  The Weather Channel also had its own application that allowed for GPS driven weather services and even gave you videos of recent Weather Channel forecasts.  There were also several Twitter apps, the one I used was called Twidroid and proved to be worthwhile for tweeting.  There are also some soundboard applications on the store, so if you ever wanted to tell someone to “get to the chopper!” in an Arnold voice, you could do that.

There were plenty of developers eager to get their games on the Android Market too.  Some were better than others, but there was plenty of selections to choose from and all of the games during my review were free.  My favorite game was probably Papijump.  It was extremely simple, hopping up a series of steps using the phone’s accelerometer to guide your way.  Bonsai Blast, Pac-Man, SmartTacToe and Tetroid rounded out the rest of my gaming experience.  Bonsai Blast combined Bejeweled like color matching with a track and shooter.  Pac-Man was your standard fare, though an official version from Namco that came with three different control schemes (tilt-based, touch-based and scroll wheel-based).  SmartTacToe is what it indicates, but a larger 8×8 form where you had to get 5 in a row.  Finishing it out would be Tetroid, a Tetris clone that was horrible and made me not like playing Tetris.  There were plenty of other games though, including minesweeper and snake clones and sudoku, maybe not something for everyone but close.

I’ve never really used instant messaging services on a phone before, it just didn’t seem worthwhile.  That changed though when I opened up the IM program on the G1.  Logging into GoogleTalk was quick and easy and I could start chatting away.  When I left the program to go play a game, it would alert me when I had a message waiting.  It was a fun aspect to the phone, that I’ve never used before and liked very much.  Along the same lines, the messaging system was fairly straightforward.  It seperated your messages in a way very similar to the iPhone and other touchscreen phones.

The camera included doesn’t include a flash, but makes up for it with a 3.2MP auto focusing shot and the fact that I can send multimedia messages.  It can’t record video natively, which is a bummer, though I wouldn’t put it past an application being created to overcome that deficiency.

The YouTube application on the G1 is about what you’d expect.  You could entertain yourself for hours, just watching the FailBlog channel.  Alternatively, you could search for one of the many hundred other funny offerings available.

The Maps app included is nice, offering directions and a little GPS indicator that lets you know where you’re at on the map.

The G1 has a copy and paste feature, though I didn’t find myself using it all that much.  The same could be said about its Amazon MP3 store, I didn’t download any tunes while reviewing the phone.  I also didn’t find myself using the music player that much, because there wasn’t a standard stereo headphone jack or a lot of room included with the phone.  It supports up to an 8GB microSD card, but only came with a 1GB offering.  An upgrade would be a must, considering the relatively cheap prices for memory.

I had a couple issues with battery life, which is a topic that already has a large amount of conversation out there.  Simply put, it didn’t last a long time.  If you’re a heavy user, you’ll want to bring a backup battery.  Even normal use will demand recharging your phone every night.

I saved the browser for last, because it’s still not Mobile Safari, but at least makes inroads.  The G1 is not multitouch capable (there are hacks out there that add the functionality, but they are a bit complicated to implement).  This means you won’t be able to pinch the screen and use fancy features to zoom out and in (instead there are buttons at the base of the touchscreen).  It does have a fairly good refresh rate when quickly scrolling through pages though.  Being that it has a slide-out keyboard, you can’t browse vertically and type in a new address without kicking out the screen.  It was a slight annoyance.  It’s probably the second best browser I’ve seen.

Overall, I think T-Mobile is offering a pretty solid phone for its customers.  The price is fair, $179.99 after discount on the t-mobile site.  I would steal a great many features from the G1 to put on my current phone, but can’t so I’m out of luck.

Plus:
+Android
+Market
+Tons of free games
+Tons of free apps
+Added functionality
+3.2MP camera
+Expandable memory
+Maps
+Copy & paste
+IM
+Messaging and MMS

Minus:
-Battery life
-Lacks standard headphone jack
-Only 1GB memory included
-Tetris still stinks, even when a clone

Indifferent:
-+Browser is better, but still no Mobile Safari
-+Music player
-+Amazon MP3 store

Other:
! I stole the headline idea from the Quest for G, because I laughed almost nonstop during the video.

Have questions about something? You can email me at matt(dot)schuler(at)woodtv(dot)com. And for more, shorter updates, check out my Twitter by clicking on twitter.com/mattschuler.