T-Mobile G1 review

By slacy|General|2 Comments

Many of my friends know that I’ve had a T-Mobile G1 “Google Phone” for a couple of months now, but I haven’t yet blogged about my experience with it.

For some context, I was already a big “Google” user, with my e-mail through Google Sites, and I use Google Reader daily.  I was once a big iGoogle user, but I sort of tapered down on that and just have e-mail as my “Home Page” on my browser.

So, the great thing about the G1 is the way it sync’s all your e-mail and all your contacts straight from GMail.   When I first got the phone, I transferred all my numbers into the GMail contacts area and the phone automatically sync’d them.  Now, any time I need to add a new number or address, I just use the web interface of GMail.  This is a really nice change.

Notifications on the phone when I get a message to my GMail account are nice, but I actually find that I usually use the phone in “read only” mode.  By that, I mean that I seldomly reply to messages on the phone.  It’s usually because I’m out and about, and not that I don’t want to reply, it’s just that I’m never quite in the right place.   The downside is that the message(s) are left “read” and I then have to sort through them again when I want to really reply.   Nonetheless, just being able to read and archive things on the go is pretty useful.

The web browser is pretty great as well.   The integration with Google is minimal other than the homepage, but the mobile-formatted Google sites are great.  Reader is great, Google News is pretty good, m.reddit.com formats great, etc.  The screen is bright and readable.

For me, there are two big drawbacks of the phone.

First is the touchscreen.  The display is great, but the touch interface is sometimes a bit off.  I’m frequently clicking on the wrong link, or having to use the trackball to navigate where I want, which is usually cumbersome.  Sometimes things at the bottom of the screen are particularly hard to click on.  The “zoom” controls of maps and the web browser are more annoying than useful.

The second biggest drawback is the performance.  For single tasking, the phone works great.  But, when you start switching between e-mail, Web, Maps, and YouTube, it starts to get pretty slow with each switch to a new application.  Sometimes it takes nearly 10 seconds to return to the Home screen, which is pretty annoying.

But, other than those two things, the phone has some really great features.  The app store is simple but effective, and there are some really interesting addon applications.  Compare Everywhere is great, as are lots of other simple tools that let you do things like toggle WiFi, etc.

I’ve also been using Loopt on the phone, which is a location-aware version of Twitter.  I find it pretty neat, and surprisingly accurate most of the time. Rumor sites are reporting on an upcoming “OTA” (Over The Air) software update that will add lots of new features.  I haven’t yet seen it, but it does promise to really fix a bunch of the rough edges, which will be quite nice.

Thats about it.  I’d heartily recommend a G1 to anyone who’s already a big user of Google services, particularly GMail.  If you’re not a big GMail user, or you’re not interested in switching, then it might be a tougher call between the G1 and the iPhone.