Call it the T-Mobile G1.0. The first-ever Google Android smartphone is a solid initial effort that, given an open development platform, will grow with time. It's missing a bunch of key features right now—like a decent media player and support for corporate e-mail, for instance. But the G1, manufactured by HTC, is a quality phone with few bugs, and given the open nature of Android, I'm confident that more features are on the way. This makes the G1 a good choice for anyone who wants an expandable phone and is interested in the future of mobile communication.
The 5.6-ounce G1 looks like a grown-up Sidekick. It's a rectangular black phone (4.6 by 2.1 by 0.6 inches—HWD) with rounded corners and a big 3.2-inch, 320-by-480-pixel capacitive touch screen that's bright and responsive. Below the display, there's a trackball; Menu, Home, and Back buttons, and buttons to pick up and end calls. Volume and camera controls are on the sides of the handset, and the 3-megapixel camera is on the back.
Slide the screen up to reveal a comfortable little QWERTY keyboard. The keys are slightly domed and separated. They're not as excellent as, say, the BlackBerry Curve keys, but they're on a par with the keys you'll find on a Sidekick.
The G1 starts up to a configurable home screen onto which you can drop any application you'd like, along with a big analog clock and a Google search box. And, yes, this home screen is completely configurable—you can even throw out the phone dialer if you want. You drag icons around on three virtual home screens, through which you scroll with a flick of the finger, just like on the iPhone.
By default, most of the phone's applications are hidden in a "drawer" that pops open with a single touch. (Again, you can move them to the home screen if you wish.) Working Android apps will be familiar to anyone who's used a touch-screen device before, with two twists: Hitting the physical Menu button brings up context-specific options and you can pull down a "window shade" from the top of the screen at any time to suppress new messages alerts and calendar alarms.
To select items on the screen, you can use either your fingers or the trackball. I found the trackball especially useful in the Web browser, where some links were too small to click with my finger.
A quad-band EDGE, dual-band HSDPA phone (1,700/2,100), the G1 works on T-Mobile's 2G and 3G networks here in the U.S. and on high-speed networks overseas. You can't use this phone as a modem for your PC, at least not yet.
We achieved 600-to-700-kilobit-per-second speeds in the G1's browser on the 3G network, which is fairly typical for a 3G phone. We also connected to our WPA2-secured 802.11g wireless network without a problem, though the G1 doesn't support T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home system for making calls over Wi-Fi. RF reception was decent.
Calls on the G1 sound terrific, at least for the person who's using the phone. Calls on T-Mobile's 3G network in New York were loud, clear, deep, and well-rounded. There's no in-ear feedback of your own voice, but whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste. The speakerphone is loud and clear. But the phone's mic layers your voice in with a lot of background sound on the other end. The G1 made calls with our mono Plantronics Voyager 520 Bluetooth headset but couldn't successfully pair with our stereo Motorola S9 headset. You get voice dialing, but you can't trigger the feature with a Bluetooth headset; you have to tap an icon on the phone. Your MP3s can be used as ringtones.—next: What You Get and What You Don't
SPEC DATA :
Price as Tested: $179.00 List
Service Provider: T-Mobile
Operating System: Other
Screen Size: 3.25 inches
Screen Details: 320x480, 65k-color capacitive TFT LCD touch screen
Camera: Yes
Megapixels: 3.1 MP
802.11x: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
Web Browser: Yes
Network: GSM, UMTS
Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100, 1700
High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
Special Features: Music
Notes: Price: $179 w/ two-year contract
The 5.6-ounce G1 looks like a grown-up Sidekick. It's a rectangular black phone (4.6 by 2.1 by 0.6 inches—HWD) with rounded corners and a big 3.2-inch, 320-by-480-pixel capacitive touch screen that's bright and responsive. Below the display, there's a trackball; Menu, Home, and Back buttons, and buttons to pick up and end calls. Volume and camera controls are on the sides of the handset, and the 3-megapixel camera is on the back.
Slide the screen up to reveal a comfortable little QWERTY keyboard. The keys are slightly domed and separated. They're not as excellent as, say, the BlackBerry Curve keys, but they're on a par with the keys you'll find on a Sidekick.
The G1 starts up to a configurable home screen onto which you can drop any application you'd like, along with a big analog clock and a Google search box. And, yes, this home screen is completely configurable—you can even throw out the phone dialer if you want. You drag icons around on three virtual home screens, through which you scroll with a flick of the finger, just like on the iPhone.
By default, most of the phone's applications are hidden in a "drawer" that pops open with a single touch. (Again, you can move them to the home screen if you wish.) Working Android apps will be familiar to anyone who's used a touch-screen device before, with two twists: Hitting the physical Menu button brings up context-specific options and you can pull down a "window shade" from the top of the screen at any time to suppress new messages alerts and calendar alarms.
To select items on the screen, you can use either your fingers or the trackball. I found the trackball especially useful in the Web browser, where some links were too small to click with my finger.
A quad-band EDGE, dual-band HSDPA phone (1,700/2,100), the G1 works on T-Mobile's 2G and 3G networks here in the U.S. and on high-speed networks overseas. You can't use this phone as a modem for your PC, at least not yet.
We achieved 600-to-700-kilobit-per-second speeds in the G1's browser on the 3G network, which is fairly typical for a 3G phone. We also connected to our WPA2-secured 802.11g wireless network without a problem, though the G1 doesn't support T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home system for making calls over Wi-Fi. RF reception was decent.
Calls on the G1 sound terrific, at least for the person who's using the phone. Calls on T-Mobile's 3G network in New York were loud, clear, deep, and well-rounded. There's no in-ear feedback of your own voice, but whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste. The speakerphone is loud and clear. But the phone's mic layers your voice in with a lot of background sound on the other end. The G1 made calls with our mono Plantronics Voyager 520 Bluetooth headset but couldn't successfully pair with our stereo Motorola S9 headset. You get voice dialing, but you can't trigger the feature with a Bluetooth headset; you have to tap an icon on the phone. Your MP3s can be used as ringtones.—next: What You Get and What You Don't
SPEC DATA :
Price as Tested: $179.00 List
Service Provider: T-Mobile
Operating System: Other
Screen Size: 3.25 inches
Screen Details: 320x480, 65k-color capacitive TFT LCD touch screen
Camera: Yes
Megapixels: 3.1 MP
802.11x: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
Web Browser: Yes
Network: GSM, UMTS
Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100, 1700
High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
Special Features: Music
Notes: Price: $179 w/ two-year contract
No comments:
Post a Comment