Made by Taiwan's HTC Corp, the G1 is being released on October 22 by T-Mobile in the US and will cost $179 with a two-year contract. The device, about the size as the iPhone but plumper, will be available in black or bronze. It sports a large touchscreen, and the lower smidgen of the device is angled -- the curvature seemed more stylistic than functional to me -- and sports four buttons and a trackball.
G1 lacks Apple's patented"multi-touch" technology – which allows users to make pinching and expanding gestures with their fingers to zoom in and out of web pages and photos on the iPhone's screen – the G1 retaliates with some tricks of its own, easily enabling users to magnify areas of a website at the touch of a button.
Beneath the touchscreen is a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that makes the G1 feel like a grownup's version of another device T-Mobile sells, the Sidekick. The keyboard will appeal to anyone who, like me, still prefers the feel of physical keys rather than virtual ones on the screen.
There's also an adjacent microSD card slot that comes loaded with a 1GB card. Don't lose this tiny card, because it's the storage spot for photos and songs you want to access on the G1.
If you want to invest in more space, the G1 supports cards up to 16 GB.
the G1 was easy to use. It includes an intuitive interface and many of Google's familiar services, like search, Gmail and Google Talk.
There's also Google Maps, which is enhanced by a built-in compass that lets you see locations in the "Street View" feature by moving the phone as you hold it.
I had no trouble doing things like instant messaging my friends, searching for bubble tea stores near my apartment, and yes, making phone calls. There is a good-looking browser that is pretty simple to navigate, and the device's screen is clear and sharp.
The G1, like the iPhone, lacks support for Flash videos – the sort of video clips we use on our Telegraph website, for instance – because of the type of processor chip used in the phone. And despite having a three-megapixel camera (still a paltry amount considering that Samsung recently launched an eight-megapixel cameraphone, but still a whole megapixel better than the iPhone, nonetheless), the G1, like the iPhone, can't record videos.
Annoyingly, the G1 lacks a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so I'm afraid you can forget about using your hideously expensive Bose noise-cancelling headphones with it – you're stuck with HTC's proprietary earphones.
This could change, though, as the network is still quite new and there are not many phones running on it yet. The phone also works on T-Mobile's slower but more widespread EDGE network; however, data functions aren't as zippy.
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.
Open the phone up, and it's even ungainlier. You have to rotate it 90 degrees to use the full QWERTY keyboard, but with the thick bottom part hanging off to one side, it looks unbalanced.
The downside of all the talking, Web surfing and content downloading is that it can quickly run down a phone's battery. The G1 promises up to five hours of talk time and nearly 5 1/2 days of standby time, but who's going to simply chat on a smartphone or let it sit gathering dust?
I gave the device a fairly realistic battery rundown -- on-and-off use of multiple functions and applications and the phone's 3G and Wi-Fi network capabilities. It's safe to say people with a serious multimedia habit will have to keep a charging cable on hand.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks