21 Oct 2008 14:28
The T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream, will be available through T-Mobile on 30 October in black or white and will be offered on two tariffs. The Combi tariff offers you a free T-Mobile G1 with 800 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited mobile Internet browsing for a total of £40 a month. On the Flext tariff you get a free T-Mobile G1 with web'n'walk for just £40 per month including unlimited mobile internet browsing and up to 1,250 minutes or up to 2,500 texts or any mix of the two.
Design
The T-Mobile G1 is manufactured by HTC and has a similar look and feel to the company's other Pocket PC smartphones, such as the HTC TyTN II and the HTC Touch Pro. Measuring 118mm tall by 56mm wide by 17mm deep and weighing 158g, the G1 is definitely not the sleekest device, and we certainly wouldn't call it sexy. Instead, the words 'interesting' and 'weird' come to mind. This is mostly because the bottom section of the phone juts out at a slight angle. Presumably, it's to get the phone's speaker closer to your mouth, which isn't a bad thing; unfortunately, it also affects the ergonomics of the keyboard, which we'll touch on later. In a battle of pure looks, Apple's iPhone would win hands down.
In a battle based on looks, we'd have to give it to the Apple iPhone.
That said, the G1 has solid construction and features a soft-touch finish on the back that provides a nice rubberlike texture, making it easy to grip the phone and comfortable to hold. Also, there's a good reason for G1's larger size: a full QWERTY keyboard. There are a number of users who are reluctant to switch to a full touch-screen smartphone because of the lack of a tactile keyboard, so the G1 is certainly an attractive option for such customers.
To access the keyboard, just push the screen to the right. The sliding mechanism is fairly interesting in that it's not a straight up-and-down motion; the screen actually swings out slightly to the left before snapping into place. The sliding motion is smooth, but after a few days of use we started to notice a creaking sound whenever we nudged the screen — not good.
The T-Mobile G1 has the advantage of a full QWERTY keyboard. Although it's spacious, the bottom portion of the phone makes it awkward to type.
The keyboard itself is a reminiscent of the T-Mobile Sidekick, as many observers pointed out during our review period. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since we like the Sidekick's keyboard. The buttons are a bit small, but overall the keyboard feels roomy and there's enough spacing between the keys not to cause problems. If anything, we wish the buttons were raised a bit more, as they're set flush with the phone's surface. The bigger issue is that the bottom section of the G1 makes it awkward to hold the phone when typing messages, which definitely affects the speed and accuracy of typing.
When you slide open the phone, the screen orientation automatically switches from portrait to landscape mode. That said, while equipped with an accelerometer, the screen doesn't change when you physically rotate the phone in its closed state. According to T-Mobile, during testing, people preferred that the screen only change when using the keyboard, which may be so, but we see the benefit of having automatic screen rotation in some instances, such as viewing pictures. This is not to say that this functionality won't be added in the future, and in the future, there will be applications where orientation will rotate with the phone's position, even when the screen is down.
The actual display measures 3.2in. diagonally and has a 320-by-480-pixel resolution. It's vibrant and sharp, and like the iPhone and RIM BlackBerry Storm, the touch-screen is capacitive, so it will only respond to the touch of your finger and not your fingernail or other objects like a stylus. The G1 provides haptic feedback, but only for certain actions and not with every touch. First, you'll feel a slight vibration when performing a long press on an icon. Overall, we thought this was fine, but there were times when the G1 didn't register our actions, so some kind of confirmation would have been nice.
To access various functions within an application, you can perform another long press and a window will pop up with your options. It's contextual, so the menu items will always be relevant to the program you are in. You can swiftly navigate through lists with a quick flick, or you can drag your finger for a slower, more precise look. In addition, you can pan and move web pages and other documents by holding and then moving your finger around the screen. Unlike the iPhone, however, the G1's touch screen isn't multi-touch, so you can't zoom in and out of pages by pinching your fingers apart. We did miss this feature, since it makes viewing web pages and pictures easy, but it's not strictly necessary.
Overall, the T-Mobile G1's interface is clean, fun and easy to use. You can customise the Home screen with your favourite apps, and you can do this in a couple of ways. For example, you can do a long press on the Home page, which will bring up a menu where you can add shortcuts and widgets or change the wallpaper. Alternatively, there's a little tab along the bottom edge of the screen that you can touch and then pull up, which reveals a full menu of applications. From there, you do a long press on an icon and then drag it to the Home screen. To remove it, perform the same touch action and then drag it to the trash can. Note that this action simply removes it from the screen and doesn't delete the application from your device. There are also sliding panels to the left and right where you can add more shortcuts, and there's a notification bar at the top, which you can pull down like a window shade and view missed calls, new messages, downloads and more.
There's a lot to like about the G1 interface, with its glass touch-screen display, slide-out QWERTY keyboard (although we don't like the small keys) and the Pearl-like trackball for navigation. But although the touch-screen is on a par with the iPhone's, we have to say that, overall, the interface isn't as intuitive. For example (as with almost every other phone), the need to dip into the menu layout every time you want to access something can get a bit clunky. Yes, it's possible to drag out your favourite applications as shortcuts, but you'll need to spend quite a bit of time setting that up. With the iPhone, there's no home screen at all — you're brought directly to the menu. Of course, the iPhone is unique in this sense, but in a strict comparison between the G1 and the iPhone, the latter's interface wins out.
Also, although we like the aforementioned trackball and menu bar, it just isn't quite as smooth as the multi-touch gestures on the iPhone — especially for zooming in and out of pictures. This is even more apparent in the browser application, which we'll explore later.
Features
Below the display, you get some tactile navigation controls, including Talk and End/Power buttons, a Home shortcut, a back button, a trackball navigator and a Menu key. Similar to the touch-screen, the Menu button is contextual to what application you're in at the time. For example, if you're in the web browser and press Menu, you'll get options to open a new window, go to a URL, bookmark a page and so on. It's a minor issue, but we're a bit annoyed that pressing the End/Power key automatically locks the handset; we're used to having the End/Power key as a shortcut to exit the application. Because of this, we ended up having to unlock the screen frequently, which got annoying.
The left spine holds a volume rocker and a microSD expansion slot. To access the latter, you have to push the screen open in order to remove the protective cover. On the right side, you'll find a camera activation/capture button, although you can also press the trackball to take pictures. We actually preferred this method, since the dedicated camera key was a bit small. Plus, when holding the phone horizontally, our thumb had a tendency to keep nudging the screen upward while trying to take a picture.
Much to our disappointment, the G1 does not have a standard headphone jack; instead, you must use the USB port and an audio adapter.
On the bottom of the unit, there is a mini-USB port, which is protected by an attached cover. This is where you can connect the power charger and sadly, this is also your only option for connecting a headset. There's no dedicated headphone jack, 3.5mm or otherwise, which is really disappointing. Yes, there's a headset included in the box, but you don't get the same comfort and quality as you would with a nice pair of headphones. If you want the privilege of using your own 'phones, you'll have to spend extra money to buy an adapter. Last but not least, the camera lens — sans flash or self-portrait mirror — is located on the back, and the G1 offers a user-replaceable battery.
The T-Mobile G1 comes packaged with a travel charger, a USB cable, a wired headset, a 1GB microSD card, a soft protective case and reference material.
The first smartphone to run the Google Android operating system, the T-Mobile G1 delivers a lot of the basic core functions and of course, tight integration with Google's products, including Google Mail, Google Maps and Google Calendar. Wireless options and multimedia capabilities are also well represented on the G1, but there are also some glaring omissions and restrictions that need to be called out.
The quad-band GSM T-Mobile G1 offers a speakerphone, voice dialling, conference calling and speed dial. There's no support for visual voice mail, but one convenience is that if you have a Google Mail account, all your contacts will automatically be synchronised to the phone book. Each entry has room for multiple phone numbers, email addresses, IM handles, postal address and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo to a contact as well as a group ID and one of 33 polyphonic ringtones. There's even a setting to send a contact's phone call directly to voice mail every time.
Bluetooth is onboard, but the supported profiles are limited to wireless headsets and hands-free kits. However, as with the iPhone 3G, there's no love for stereo Bluetooth or tethering, so you can't use it as a modem for your notebook. We can live without the latter, but if we can't get a 3.5mm headphone jack, we'd at least like stereo Bluetooth support.
The T-Mobile G1 is a 3G smartphone with HSDPA support providing download speeds of up to 7.2Mbps with a suitable signal. Where HSDPA or 3G coverage isn't available, the connection will drop down to GPRS.
As an alternative to 3G, the G1 has integrated Wi-Fi and it can seamlessly transfer between 3G and accessible Wi-Fi networks. In fact, the smartphone's YouTube application will only present videos in high resolution when you're using Wi-Fi; it plays the low-res version when using the cellular network in order to optimise the load times. There's an application in the Android Market called iSkoot for Skype, which allows you to make Skype calls via the phone's radio rather than Wi-Fi, but we imagine there will be VoIP clients added to the database.
There's also a wireless manager under the Settings menu where you can turn on and off all the radios and set up connections. To save battery life, you can turn off 3G and revert to the GPRS network — a good idea if you don't need to surf the web or download apps or music.
The T-Mobile G1 uses Webkit as the basis for its browser, which is also the core of the Safari browser found on the iPhone. It uses full HTML browsing, has Java support and lets you surf almost every web site — except those that use Flash. You can pan across the screen by using your finger, and even though you can't zoom in via pinching as you can on the iPhone, you can bring up on-screen zoom controls at the bottom of the display. Similar to the iPhone, you can also double-tap on a Web page to zoom in on a particular section.
Of course, you're not limited to the touch-screen when navigating the browser — in fact, we preferred to use the trackball to scroll around pages at times. You can also tab between multiple browser windows, and we like the fact that the browser settings are easily accessible via the browser menu itself. With the iPhone, you have to dig into the Settings menu to find the Safari settings. As with the iPhone, you can view the browser in both portrait and landscape modes.
But there are a few glitches with the G1 browser that keep it from being a totally seamless experience. For example, we didn't like that we had to go in and out of the browser menu to do basic browser navigation such as Back and Forward. Yes, there are keyboard shortcuts for these functions, but we don't want to have to remember shortcuts all the time. And even though we like having the physical QWERTY keyboard, an on-screen keyboard would make it easier to enter text when holding the phone in portrait mode. The G1's smaller display makes browsing a bit more troublesome than on the iPhone, since you need to scroll around a lot more.
Although the interface for the browser leaves a bit to be desired, we like the number of customisable settings available. These include text size, the ability to block pop-up windows, the option of turning off image loading, the option of autofitting the pages to the screen, the capability to enable or disable JavaScript, the option of not accepting cookies — and, of course, the option to clear out the cache, history, cookies and passwords. Perhaps the most intriguing browser option is that you can enable 'Gears', which are potential future applications that can extend the browser functionality. What this means is that Google might develop a way for you to take some of your web stuff offline — imagine being able to edit your Google Docs without an internet connection, for example, and then sync it back online when you do have a signal. This isn't available yet, but it certainly has potential.
In a move to compete against the iPhone's built-in App Store, Google has also come up with a mobile application store of its own, called Android Market. Since the Android Market is so new, it's hard to compare the applications available with the ones on the iPhone. However, we think it shows plenty of promise. Already there are applications like ShopSavvy that lets you scan bar codes for comparison shopping, and BreadCrumz, which allows you to create routes for your friends using photos as visual aids. We'll update this section as the Android Market develops.
The G1 offers support for several email account types. As a Google product, Google Mail, of course, gets top billing, but you can also configure the smartphone to access POP3 and IMAP4. There's full HTML support, so you'll be able to view photos and graphics along with the text. You'll have access to all of your folders and any action that you perform on the smartphone, such as deleting an email, will be reflected in your real account. To the delight of many, we're sure, you get copy-and-paste capabilities, and there's an attachment viewer to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF documents — but note that you can't edit said files (the iPhone is also view-only). We successfully set up our review unit with both our Google Mail and Yahoo accounts simply by entering our log-in ID and password. Our Google Mail contacts seamlessly transferred to the G1, and mobile email delivery was sometimes faster than on our PC, but attachments took a while to download.
There's bad news for business users in that Microsoft Exchange Server support will be lacking at launch, so there's no synchronisation with your Outlook email, Calendar, Contacts and so forth. You can check Outlook email via OWA (Outlook Web Access), but we would have liked full support from the outset. We think this is a pretty glaring omission. We assume all parties involved would want to attract both consumers and business users, and given the inclusion of a full QWERTY keyboard, the G1 would make a good messaging-centric device for mobile professionals. However, without that Exchange support, it could be a turn-off for a lot of business customers.
The G1 comes preloaded with four instant-messaging clients, including Google Talk, AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger. You can keep IM chats in the background while working in other applications. The smartphone also offers threaded text messaging and multimedia messaging.
The T-Mobile G1 offers basic PIM (personal information management) and productivity tools. You get Calendar, Contacts, a calculator and an alarm clock. The advantage of the T-Mobile G1 is that Contacts, Calendar and Google Mail are updated over the air, so you don't have to synch up with your computer every day. Aside from the email attachment viewer, Google Docs is supported for view only, but we couldn't access a shared Google spreadsheet. Again, the T-Mobile G1 might not be the best choice for corporate users given that you can't really edit Office documents. We're sure as the Android Market expands more productivity applications will become available.
The G1 offers assisted GPS and network-assisted location. Of course, Google Maps is preloaded on the device with standard map, satellite and traffic views.
While Apple had the unenviable task of incorporating a full-blown iPod-like music player into the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1 is made to be more mobile phone than music player. That said, the music player on the G1 is robust for what it is, and will satisfy most casual listeners. Songs are organised by Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists, as you would expect. You get the typical music player functions like shuffle, repeat and the ability to create playlists on the fly. And even though there's no CoverFlow, you can still view album art in a list format. We especially liked the ability to instantly convert any song to a ringtone directly from the music player by hitting the 'Use as ringtone' button.
You can upload any of your own music files into the G1. The G1 supports MP3, M4A, AMR, WMA, MIDI, WAV and Ogg Vorbis formats, and has 192MB RAM and 256MB ROM. As we mentioned, the G1 comes with a 1GB microSD card, which comes preloaded with 11 songs. The expansion slot can support up to 8GB cards.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the G1 music player is hardware related. The G1 doesn't have stereo Bluetooth, and it doesn't have a 3.5-mm headset jack. These are absolutely glaring omissions in our opinion, and it certainly means the G1 is not meant to be a music player replacement.
The T-Mobile G1 features a microSD expansion slot on the left side, which supports cards up to 8GB.
The T-Mobile G1 includes a dedicated YouTube application. The clips took quite a while to load via 3G, and quality wasn't the greatest. Although images and audio were synchronised, it was quite blurry, but we were also watching a low-res version since we were using T-Mobile's network instead of Wi-Fi. The screen orientation will go from portrait to landscape mode for videos.
The T-Mobile G1 is equipped with a 3.2-megapixel camera, which beats the iPhone's 2-megapixel camera, but you can't record video. Even worse, there are no camera settings, such as white balance, effects and shooting modes.
After taking numerous shots, this was the clearest picture we could take with the G1's camera.
Taking pictures with the G1 was a challenge. You have to have a steady hand to get a clear shot, as the slightest movement will result in a blurry image. We took about 10 to 12 pictures before we could get a satisfactory shot, and by the end, we were fairly frustrated with the experience. Picture quality was mediocre. We found that objects on the outside had sharp definition, but got a bit soft in the middle. There was also a bit of a yellowish hue to the image.
Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; UMTS/HSDPA 1700/2100) T-Mobile G1 in San Francisco using T-Mobile's service, and call quality was good. We enjoyed good sound with minimal background noise, though audio was a bit blown out when the volume was set to the highest level. We had no problems interacting with an airline's voice-automated response system and didn't experience any dropped calls during our review period. Our colleagues also reported positive results, saying the sound quality was quite good. Unfortunately, the speakerphone wasn't as pristine. On our end, the voices sounded tinny and garbled at times; meanwhile, our callers said that we sounded far away. We were able to pair the T-Mobile G1 with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset.
We were impressed by the G1's snappy performance during our testing period, and we didn't experience any system freezes or crashes. It has a rated talk time of 5 hours and up to 5 days of standby time. We are still conducting our battery drain tests, but will update this section with a full range of results. Anecdotally, on an average day of using the phone, web, GPS, and multimedia applications, we noticed that the battery life dropped anywhere from 40 to 50 percent.
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