T-Mobile G1 review

When we first laid eyes on the T-Mobile G1 a few months ago back, it wasn’t the sort of love at first sight you hear about in Hollywood Blockbusters. Nonetheless we had high hopes for the handset. We were quite enamoured with its looks, features and functionality and, much like a pushy mother, we wanted it to go forth into the world and do us proud.

Thankfully, unlike a proud parent our love is not unconditional and we will point out shortcomings. After all, if this is the first Android-based phone, how are all the other guys meant to get it right if they don’t know what consumers do and don’t want?

We might have over sensitive noses that go a bit funny when someone wearing a splash of Old Spice walks past us, but nonetheless we thought the casing and keypad smelt a bit rubbery. As far as we’re concerned, if a phone’s going to smell it might as well be of something nice. Like, er, a new born baby's head or roses, perhaps?

The 3.2inch, 320x480 pixel screen looks hot, but it didn’t like our fingers. Smudge marks are attracted like metal filings to a magnet, which isn't the most handy thing for a touchscreen handset.

Smudge unhappiness aside, the G1’s touchscreen is very responsive. A little too responsive at times. We’ve encountered some pretty sluggish touchscreens in our time where even a hammer and a chisel wouldn’t necessarily guarantee you the command you wanted, but we were pleasantly surprised by what the G1 offered up. Once we’d got used to how quickly or slowly to scroll down menus and such like, we were as happy as the proverbial.

At 158g and 1.7cm thick, the G1 is never going to blend in in a room. But, sometimes you have to balance features over size to get what you want.

The home, menu and back hard navigational keys below the screen are useful additions and we became fans of the context sensitive menus delivered depending on which application we had open. Alas, we found the track ball a bit scratchy and sandpaper-like so tried to avoid using it. The UI, however, was slick and a pleasure to use; particularly, the desktop-like feel of being able to drag and drop icons around.

And, if the apps bundled with the handset aren’t enough for you, there’s plenty more on offer in the Android market. You can browse apps based on popularity or date and the process – and time it takes – to download and install your chosen apps is as easy as pie. Our chosen application, aCurrency, took up just 156KB of space and took around 10 seconds to download, which is pretty fast by anyone’s standards.

Talking of speed, up to 7.2Mbps of HSDPA action is on the table for web hungry users. You’ll need to take advantage of the zoom in and out buttons however as, while web pages appear in their entirety, they can look a little far away and squashed.

Big love to the keyboard, which we found spacious and comfortable akin to the difference between economy and business class on an international flight. However, the accelerometer is a little lazy and only flips into landscape mode when the keyboard is in play.

We’re still a bit miffed by the snubbing of Exchange support, but what support the G1 does offer (POP3 and IMAP) it does well – and speedily.

The fact that new email messages – and texts to boot – appear via a notification in the top left of the handset is still a winner as far as we’re concerned. Just pressing the icon alone doesn’t activate it; you have to press down quite hard to drag said message out of the rafters and into the main spotlight. Wave goodbye to accidental commends through trigger-happy touchscreen swiping.

We remain miffed by the lack of exchange support and the fact there is no 3.5mm headphone jack. Instead, you’re left to what we can only describe as Frankenstein-like proprietary ugly buds that will be ill fitting for anyone with anything other than BFG-esque ear canals. Battery life was pretty poor and the camera was also a let down, particularly in brightly-lit areas.

Despite its flaws, we have to weigh up our review of the G1 based on both the hardware and the software. Android is a beauty of an OS and it will go on to achieve great things. T-Mobile’s G1 is perhaps its training ground and, for that, we are thankful.