I used to think that gadget phones were ridiculous. I’d scoff at early adopters as they held small laptops to their heads to talk to someone only to fight with tiny screens and keys if they wanted to search the net or email someone. “Buy a regular phone and a laptop, you twit” is what I would inevitably mumble under my breath to them. I just really found it silly to have a camera onboard that took blurry pixilated images, a web browser that never worked properly and was impossible to view on a small screen, an mp3 player that sucked down your batteries rendering your phone worthless to actually make calls until recharged, and poor sound quality on calls because the engineers spent more time on the gadget part of the phone than the phone part of the phone.

I’ve now had a change of heart.

About a year ago I bought a Samsung U740. That’s the one with the dual-flip action that gives you access to a full (and hopelessly confusing looking) keyboard so you can text with ease. Like most of these sorts of phones, it had a browser, a camera, and a music player – none of which I used very often, except the camera if I was in a pinch. Oh, and no one could ever hear me properly when I used it as a phone.

My contract with Verizon Wireless was up a few weeks ago and as it happened I saw an ad for the T-Mobile G1. The G1 is the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system. As a Google fan, I figured it deserved a look. I watched a few video demonstrations for it and before I knew it my credit card had $179.00 more on it.

I’ve now owned it for two weeks and I really love this thing. Like any wiz-bang gadget, it has some strengths and weaknesses. We will get the weaknesses out of the way first so we can bask in its coolness later on.

First thing is the looks...



...rectangular with rounded edges and a protruding chin. Where have I seen that before?





The usual response when people see it in person is, “Oh, it’s not as big and clunky as I thought it would be.” And that pretty much sums it up nicely. Here it is in comparison to my old phone.

The plus side of this design is that you have a nice, big touchscreen display (480 x 320 pixels) and a spacious, usable keyboard as well as immediate access to the send, end, home, back, and menu buttons and a trackball to supplement navigation.

The built-in camera is a no-frills three megapixel jobby. Point, hold very still, and click. Pictures are stored on a micro SD card (1 GB included, expandable to 16GB and beyond) which is hidden to the right of the keyboard.



Here is a picture taken from inside my car using the camera.

The other potential disappointments are: no headphone jack (you have to buy a crappy dongle to adapt your headphones to the USB plug at the bottom of the phone), Bluetooth is mono only (so far), and the battery life is quite poor (you’ll be charging it every day – sometimes more.)

My only real gripe is the battery life, but since the battery is user-replaceable, I’m sure an extended life version is just around the corner.

OK, now on to the cool stuff. Because this is Google-powered thingy, you give it your Google account information (or create an account) the first time you use it. With that, it will automatically sync up with your email, contacts, and calendar. Changes to contacts, emails, and calendar events on the phone and changes on the web are nearly instantly and continually synced in real time! One great upshot to this is that as you switch phones over the years (assuming they run Android), your contact info will follow you with no effort.

I guess the first order of business is how does it work as a phone? I’m pleased to report that the sound quality is just dandy on both sides of the conversation! Also, contacts can be reached with ease through the contact tab of the dialer, or by direct icons on the desktop.

Which brings me to the Android OS. Here is a quick rundown of that. The default state of the phone is to show the desktop, accessible at any time by hitting the home key on the chin. You actually get two additional desktop screens, accessible by dragging your finger across the touch screen to the left or right. The desktop is completely customizable. You can add shortcuts to any application, widget (like a clock), or contact that you want and thanks to a free application called Any Cut, you can add a shortcut to any menu screen as well. You can drag the icons around the screen simply by holding them down for about a second.

At the top of the screen is the notification area. Any new email, text message, voicemail message, IM, or any other piece of information that a running application wants to chuck up there is displayed at the top of the screen, and you can view a list of them just by dragging down the bar at the top of the screen. As you can see, no one loves me.



At the bottom of the screen is the Application Tab. Drag it up to take a gander at all of your apps. Scrolling the page is as simple as dragging it up and down with your finger, or by using the Blackberry-style track ball.




If you hit the End Call button, it will shut the screen off (otherwise it will timeout after a user selectable time.) You can choose to have the phone lock at this point, and require a pattern to be traced on the screen to get back into the phone. Very James Bond.

So what kind of apps are there for this thing? Well, you have a battery of apps such as calendar, calculator, Gmail, email, IM (AIM, Google Talk, Windows Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger), text messaging, picture viewer, mp3 player, YouTube player, dialer, contact manager, and alarm clock. You also get Google Maps, and a real honest-to-goodness web browser that was built with the same toolkit as Apple’s Safari.

Let’s check out the maps since that’s a lot of fun. Start the Map app and you get the standard map view that you’d get from Google’s site.

Hit the menu button and you can then do a search for a location or point of interest, get turn-by-turn directions, or ask it to show you your current location. The phone can triangulate your location from the cell towers and by using its built-in GPS receiver. I found the accuracy to be very good. I’m not showing you the current location screen – I have too many people cross at me right now for writing a silly article about the Pope. No need to tempt fate if you know what I mean.

So let’s play. We hit search and type in W 42nd St., New York, NY.


Cool, now let’s hit menu and change the view to Satellite.





We can navigate around by dragging the screen. We can also zoom in and out using on-screen controls. Sorry, no multi-touch coolness on this phone. Here is someone’s basketball court.


Now we switch to street view.




Check it out; we are now standing in the middle of traffic, yeah!



Hit menu and turn compass mode on. Hold the phone in portrait mode. Thanks to a built-in compass and accelerometers, we can survey our surroundings just by moving the phone around. Tilting up and down looks up and down. Spin yourself around and the view follows your compass direction. One day when I’m board I may go to New York City and stand in this same spot (in traffic) to see how well the phone tracks reality, but not today. At any rate, it’s not a completely practical feature but it is great fun when showing off the phone to your mates.





I need a drink. Let’s hit search and type in bar.




Show me my results on the map.



Hmm, Rudy Bar and Grill.



I can call it, but I think I’ll just get directions.



Sounds like I’m going out of my way since I’m walking. Show me the map route.



Oh, it’s just up one block and over two. Got it.

OK, now I’m drunk and I want to find Godzilla. I think he lives by Hibiya Park in Tokyo.





Let’s switch to satellite and zoom in.



I think he’s in this square. Let’s go to street view.



There he is! Let’s zoom in.


Found Ya!!

Ok, enough of maps. How’s the browser?


It rocks. It’s fast and navigation is a breeze. Start typing either a URL or a search term and the browser automatically brings up a text box and does its thing when you hit enter.

You can zoom in and out with the on-screen controls.



Or, you can click the zoom-box. Drag it over the section you want to magnify and let go.

It supports just about everything but flash applications. Still, it is nice to be able to browse the “real” Internet, not the WAP one. What’s more, if you are within reach of an access point, you can turn on the 802.11g wireless functionality and surf the net even faster without going over the cellular network (3G or Edge). I really like how usable the phone is for surfing.

After you’ve exhausted all of the fun you can have with the built-in apps, you can run the Marketplace app (some say it should have been called the G-spot, but I digress.)  Since Android is an open OS, any slouch can write a program for it, not just Google. To me, this is one of the best parts of the G1 because it makes for nearly limitless possibilities for expanding and improving the phone. For instance, I downloaded a free app called Bubble which, surprisingly enough, turns the phone into a level thanks to its on-board accelerometers.






Or how about this one: ShopSavy.



Say we are at a store and about to make a major purchase. Some Windex perhaps. (It was at hand, what can I say?)

Get a good view of the UPC barcode.



Click search for a product.



Point the camera at the barcode.



Tada.

Looks like we can get it cheapest on the web for $2.99. Let’s see the list.


Sometimes it will also show you if another local shop has it by your current location. No one has Windex by me, apparently.

Another great feature of this phone is its friendliness toward MP3s. Want some music on the phone? Plug the phone into your computer using a USB cable (included) and it mounts as a drive. Drag your music over. Done. No stupid software needed. Want to use an MP3 as a ringtone? No problem at all, it will let you without any fuss. In fact, you can also download a killer app called Ringroid which will let you cut out the bits of the music that you want to use for a ringtone without having to muck with a computer. And it works perfectly. And it’s free. No more downloading rigtones that will expire in a year (or using bitpim to stuff your own ones on the phone). Suck it, Verizon.



If you do want to download music, the phone ships with an Amazon MP3 app, which lets you buy songs in MP3 format, completely DRM free! This means that you can later transfer them to any MP3 player of your choice after you realize that there is no headphone jack on this phone.

Overall, I absolutely love the T-Mobile G1. It’s packed with great hardware and has infinitely upgradeable software. T-Mobile has already pushed two firmware updates to the phone, so it looks like they intend to keep it in top shape. Despite its complexity, it is so user friendly that I think even non-geeks will learn to love it. I see great potential for the Android OS, and I can’t wait for it to be available on more refined hardware. Until then, me and Marvin will be joined at the hip.



*** UPDATE 2-11-2009***

A few days ago I got an update alert on my G1 and I was psyched because I thought I was getting the elusive Cupcake update, which I'm sure you are all sick of hearing about by now. Anyway, the bastards only released some cupcake crumbs in the form of a firmware update to V1.1 and a build update to RC33. There are some bug fixes that are in it, which I could care less about, but also a few interesting additions. You can now save MMS attachments, which I consider a bug fix. I think you also have greater file saving ability from the browser.

Voice Search has also been added, so if you are just too lazy to type into the Google search bar, you can now press the Voice Search icon and speak out your search terms. You are rewarded with a Google results page with links that spawn your browser. Kind of neat but I probably won't use it much.

Another added feature is the addition of Google Latitude to the Google Maps application. Latitude is one of those applications that lets you see on a map the location of all your friends that are also members of Latitude and is the sort of thing that gives privacy advocates, conspiracy theorists, and child protection groups the cold willies. To me it seems frivolous, but if you are an overbearing boss in charge of a bunch a unscrupulous sales people, it might be handy to see if they are spending most of their day at the local titty bar.

One last change I noticed is the ability to check for system updates whenever the fancy strikes you. This option is buried in the About Phone section of the Settings menu. Also, the Marketplace app automatically checks for updates to all of your apps, and you now have the ability to report out of place comments (like "1st bitches!!!!!!!")

Oh, and T-Mobile has been removed from the list of contributors (in the About Phone Section) for some reason. I'm not sure why that is so.

All in all, this phone and the Android OS just keep getting better and the quality of the apps in the marketplace is finally starting to get respectable. I really love my G1 and I think it will come to be known as the launching point of a really great platform.

Here are some links to Amazon if you are interested:

T-Mobile G1 Phone with Google
2200mAh Li-Ion Replacement Extended Battery for Google G1, T-Mobile G1