The “Break it Down” Blog

Update #1: We have also put up a 4-part T-Mobile G1 video review for readers as well.

Summary [7.5 out of 10]

The T-Mobile G1 is an excellent “first-mover” Android-based phone from T-Mobile and is truly a “Google Phone”. If you are already have most of your life on Google through one of their many handy and free services (Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Talk, Picasaweb, etc.) the G1 is going to be a dream device for you. If you don’t make use of the Gmail services or have most of your life scattered across many different services, the G1 will be an OK phone for you, but we’d suggest also looking at a BlackBerry or iPhone as well as there are some things those phones do better than the G1.

The Great

• Call-quality (both receiving and sending) is very nice. People I spoke too (in an A/B comparison between iPhone) said that the iPhone sounded just like a typical crappy cell phone and the G1 sounded like I was on my office phone. I also felt the volume of the G1 was louder when talking to people making it a bit easier for me to hear them.
• Google services integration is awesome. It’s completely seamless, syncs over-the-air regardless of the data connection you have, seems to sync frequently so your contacts, calendar, email and IM are all always synced up. Also the synchronization is bi-directional, you don’t have a “Read only” copy on the G1… you can change anything you want and see it synced right back to Google.
• Having a keyboard is very handy. The non-super-techy types that I lent the phone to for a few hours all commented that the physical keyboard felt and “made more sense” than a virtual on-screen keyboard to them like the iPhone or BlackBerry Storm.
• The trackball is much handier to have for selection than I anticipated. Also it’s position on the phone is perfect for both landscape and portrait use. I was surprised (in landscape mode) how my thumb naturally fell right ontop of the trackball, making it much easier to navigate the screen without lifting my hand off the keyboard to press something.
• Micro-SD support – including the new 16GB cards that were released recently.
• Voice dialing – How does the iPhone still not have this. I also found the accuracy excellent, pretty much on par with what my BlackBerry had. I also noticed when you have multiple numbers for a single person, even though the voice-dialing result screen shows you all their numbers, it always puts the one you wanted as the first item, so it’s easy to execute. Unfortunately if you like to drive with your phone in your pocket and call people, this might be an extra step some folks don’t want.
• Back Button – Similar to the BlackBerry OS, the “Back” button always does what you think it should. If you read an email, and jump into a browser to check a link and click a YouTube link to watch a video… the “Back” button will move you backward through those contexts back to the original email as you keep hitting it. This has always driven me nuts on the iPhone – you have to go back to the home screen first, then back into whatever it was that you were doing.
• EDGE data performance seemed snappy on the phone. While browsing is certainly still just as slow as you would expect, the Chrome-based browser performed well and the background-sending/receiving of data in every other app gave an excellent user experience. Coming from a 1st Gen iPhone on an EDGE network, I was used to much longer lag related to data operations (like Maps or Email) so it did seem a hair more performant – or maybe just designed in a more streamlined flow, it’s hard to say.

• Mobile YouTube was easy to use and looked great on the little screen. Playback started quickly and the interface was easy to use – I find the iPhone interface a bit too constrained.
• Basic UI for the Android apps on the G1 were very intuitive; I didn’t find myself pointing out UI oddities left and right as I tend to do, everything just did what I expected it to and menu items were right where I thought they would be.
• Universal notification bar across the top of the screen became a huge “must have” for me. Going back to the iPhone is going to be painful after this (and dealing with multiple overlapping dialog boxes). Any time anything happens on the phone that you have notifications setup for (IM, Email, SMS, etc.) a notification icon is added to the bar that you can drag-down with your finger any time to view the contents of. It makes multi-tasking possible where as the iPhone is a single-context device.
  



• Operating system updates are downloaded over-the-air and you are prompted to install them seamlessly at your discretion. This is both over EDGE as well as 3G.

The Good

• Build quality was more solid than I expected. I expected the whole phone to be that “plastic cell phone feel”, but the top sliding piece that has the screen in it is actually a solid feeling piece of metal with the glass-esque screen connected to a plastic body.
• The Android UI is a lot more polished and “sexy” looking than I thought it would be. It’s not quite like the iPhone, but sexier than BlackBerry OS on the Curve or Pearl (I haven’t spent enough time with the Storm or Bold to compare, but at first glance I’d say it’s a bit nicer).
• We found most all of the Android applications and system design to be intuitive and flow nicely.
• It is nice to have a “Menu” button again. I got used to it on my BlackBerry as a source of secondary operations that you may want in any application, and missed it on my iPhone — sometimes feeling like functionality was trimmed to far in the name of  a “simple interface”.
• The slide-out mechanism for the G1’s screen is much sturdier than I thought it would be. I don’t forsee this breaking down over time as it has a smooth operation to it and held firmly in place with two guiding pieces. It’s also got a good amount of spring-tension to make the operation feel stiff/firm and not flimsy or chinsey.
• Replaceable battery – slide the back cover off and you are all set. You can replace the battery yourself. None of this Apple-crap where you send your device in for “service” to get the battery replaced.

The Bad

• Form factor is large enough to consider this a “large” phone. The iPhone was a big phone, but skinny enough you didn’t really notice it. The G1 is about 30-40% thicker feeling than the iPhone, so in your pocket, you absolutely notice it. I’d say if you are used to wearing tight jeans, trying to shove this down in a pocket and dig it out is going to be more of a pain then something more streamlined like an iPhone.
• Backlighting of all the keys (keyboard and main face buttons) is dim, uneven and times out quickly so it’s easy to loose your orientation when ready before hitting another key. This is really annoying in normal-room-lighting, because the backlighting will always kick in (no sensor) causing the white lettering on the keys to almost become the same color as the key itself, so you suddenly cannot read the keys until the backlighting turns off or you hold the keyboard at an angle so you can read it. This an odd (and annoying) side effect of “all-the-time” backlighting that I had never experienced before on another device.
• Main face-buttons are all the same size, feel and are flush with the face so you cannot navigate them in the dark. You usually have to do something like hit “Menu” or roll the control ball to get the “back lighting” to wake up, then press the button you want.
• Screen display quality is slightly less fidelity than the iPhone (very minor). It’s hard to tell, but none of us were “struck” by the beauty of the screen clarity, resolution or brightness unlike (for example) some of the recent BlackBerry Storm reviews that actually called out how nice the screen was. If the iPhone is just fine for you, and you don’t need a noticeably improved screen, then this won’t matter at all. Just pointing out that there isn’t any improvement here.
• The touch-screen performance felt about 15% less accurate than the iPhone. Meaning you had to press a bit harder something or press it a few times before it “clicked”, quick clicks with the finger or some slides didn’t register right at first. This didn’t happen often and for the most part the touch screen was just fine, no usability impact — it’s just that we did notice a hair of a difference in what would be interpreted as “accuracy” of the touch screen.
  • ADDENDUM: As one of the viewers on our G1 video review pointed out, the less screen sensitivity was likely due to the protective film we left over the screen. A lot of folks still use screen protectors, so this point could still be important for them, but we wanted to make that clarification. With the screen protector off, the touch screen performance would be expected to be on par with the iPhone.
• From time to time we noticed the OS lag after a button push by up to 6 secs before responding. We’ve seen this on the iPhone as well (and BlackBerry), but on the G1 the pauses seemed more pronounced.
• No standard headphone jack. There is only the Mini-USB connection at the bottom of the phone or the choice of a Bluetooth headset – Unfortunately because of the poor battery life, we don’t think a Bluetooth headset for the purpose of audio is a good choice here.
• The connection mechanism for the entire back plate of the phone (that pulls off like opening a clam) isn’t as secure as you might like it. If you dropped this phone I could certainly see the back plate popping off and the battery falling out. A more purposeful latch would have been nice.

The Ugly

• Battery life is bad without WiFi and pure crap with it turned on. Overall, about 1/3 the life of my 1st Gen iPhone and on the verge of what I would consider “Something you should really consider if battery life is important”. You are going to be plugging this in every night on easy use and if you are a mobile warrior type (few hours of calling a day, lots of map lookups, email, sms, IM’ing, etc.) you are going to need to have this plugged in during the day as well so as not to have it run out on you in the field. This bothered us.

Conclusion [7.5 out of 10]

The T-Mobile G1 doesn’t seem to have flaws necessarily, more like shortcomings. Depending on the type of user you are, the G1 can be a dream-come-true device (Google-Services-dependent) or a disappointment (Media/Application-heavy user coming from iPhone); it just depends on what you need.

The T-Mobile G1 is a great first-attempt at a phone, but it’s still just that: a 1st attempt.

The device itself and Android operating system felt and operated well, but you couldn’t help but notice shortcomings in certain places (as noted above in the Bad/Ugly lists) that would all probably be fixed by more time in the oven. We fully expect to see a T-Mobile G2 (or whatever you want to call it) with a seriously refined Android experience and tweaked hardware provide an awesome smart-phone experience — just right now with the G1, your happiness with it will depend entirely on how you want to use it.

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