Since November 08 I've been the owner of a T-Mobile G1. For those not in the know, this is the first phone to use Google's Linux based smartphone OS called Android. Android is quite a big deal for the mobile phone world for two reasons. Firstly it means manufacturers don't have to pay hefty license fees to a company like Microsoft, secondly because it's an open source OS manufacturers can tinker with it to make it an ideal fit for their device.
So Android's lovely and we should all embrace it. Well... no. There are a number of problems right now, some of which are the fault of Android (Google), others are down to the inadequate hardware of the T-mobile G1 phone.
The G1 is made by a company called HTC who've been making Windows Mobile based devices for years. I've had two of them and been pretty happy with both. The phone we all call a G1 is in fact an HTC Dream and it's a bit poor. HTC have made several phones with a screen that flips up to reveal a keyboard. Each of these has been a slight evolution of the previous model. The G1 does away with all this sensible design and uses a strange hinge that leaves the keyboard blocked by a huge lump of phone. Also the keys have such a low profile that they're actually quite hard to use by feel. These are minor gripes compared to the pathetic battery life and internal memory capacity. Anybody who's used to working with 3G networks knows that 3G eats batteries for breakfast, leaving nothing by lunchtime. The Dream needs a considerably bigger battery. The phone also hasn't got anywhere near enough memory, 8GB of internal memory would have been about right. But my biggest gripe is with Android itself.
I mentioned the lack of internal memory. The G1 does have a card slot and now comes with an 8GB card, but this is almost entirely useless for most people because Android's security model doesn't allow applications to live on the memory card, they can only live in the phones internal memory, which is tiny. Effectively what we have is hardware designed for Windows Mobile, not Android.
To be honest I can't help but feel this OS simply isn't ready. All the basics are there. The OS works, it's stable and by all accounts the API is nice enough to use so developers are happy working on it. But the included applications are a long way off. Considering this entire OS and all its included apps are from Google why is it that Google Maps and You Tube are a pale imitation of their counterparts on the iPhone? The browser isn't bad, but doesn't handle zooming in a very elegant way. But the e-mail client is quite possibly the worst piece of e-mail software I've used for a very long time, on any platform. I'm not going to go into what's wrong with it, but suffice to say it feels like I've stepped back about 10 years. Some folks have created a forked version of the Open Source code in the form of K9, an attempt to better the bundled mail app. It's better, but still woefully slow and awful. Clever people who understand these things will tell you that Google have optimized Android for the wrong thing, low memory use instead of fewer processor cycles. Memory is cheap both to buy and to run, but processor time costs precious battery life.
You'll be getting the idea that I'm not happy with my G1. You're right. I'm not. It's a long way from being what it should be. This phone is being marketed as a rival to the iPhone and in pretty much every way it just isn't. I have no doubt that Android has a reasonably bright future but I'm very disappointed that Google chose to release it when they did. Many people will have done exactly what I did, bought the G1 because it has Google's name on it and expected great things. Instead what we've got is a developers toy that probably won't be ready as a viable platform until the end of 2009/early 2010. By that time Android will have come on a long way and there will be new hardware on the market.
Sadly those of use who were early adopters with a G1 will probably find T-mobile/HTC lose interest and we won't get the juicy updates. I understand Flash has been announced for Android. I'm willing to bet it won't run on the G1 with its limited memory.
So after several months of use I'm afraid I can't recommend the G1 to anyone. The slick simplicity of the iPhone betters it in every way. I'd even go for one of the current crop of Windows Mobile devices over the G1 if I had the option. Unfortunately I'm stuck in a contract until May 2010
