T-Mobile G1

The T-Mobile G1 is the Googlephone. Did we really need to say that? Well, there's more Google in this story than there is phone, so we guess we did. We've got a new contender on the race track but we're talking no rookie here. If you thought Apple made the phone game breathtaking, think of where it's all heading with Google keen to play along. Unlike the iPhone Mac OS X, the Android is the joint effort of the whole Open Handset Alliance, which brings together makers that sure know the drill. So much for the rookie, as long as Google is siding with Asus, HTC, LG, Garmin, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba.

T-Mobile G1 or to be also released as HTC Dream might not have the specs to make a geek's heart melt but we guess the Android OS was still gonna draw drool even if it came tossed in a plastic bag or wrapped in newspaper. So, forget about the peculiar form factor, the full QWERTY keyboard, the large and crisp touchscreen and the anti-utopian design. Android's inside and google is the limit.

Key features: Android OS 3.2" capacitive touchscreen display of HVGA resolution Slide-out five-row full QWERTY keyboard Qualcomm MSM 7201A 528 MHz CPU, 192 MB RAM Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps 3.15 megapixel autofocus camera Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g GPS Trackball Accelerometer sensor Digital compass

G1 does look like a rather wary and conservative approach to introducing a new OS to the mobile world. While the T-Mobile G1 isn't by any means low-end it kind of deliberately falls short of what the current multimedia monsters have to offer, both in terms of styling and mind-boggling high-tech feats. This gives the G1 two quite important advantages. Firstly the main focus of the device remains on the OS, though this doesn't exactly relieve the pressure. Secondly, keeping a low profile allows the G1 to get away with its juvenile weaknesses more easily.

Another seemingly smart move by Google is to debut in a rather vacant segment where the G1 will face less competition. While there certainly are a few slide-out QWERTY touchscreens, only a couple of them have achieved a fair degree of success recently.

HTC Touch Pro and Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 are both manufactured by HTC and are basking in the spotlight. However, the WinMo Professional isn't everyone's cup of tea even with all the custom plug-ins there are. So why not freshen things up by bringing something completely new - the G1.

The result they achieved is controversial - the G1 sells pretty decently but still hasn't matched the iPhone kind of hype. Part of the explanation is of course the iPhone itself, which raised the bar rather high for any newcomers. But we doubt that any personal failure of the G1 - if any - is not likely to spell doom for the Android platform. So, in a way that sounds pretty safe and reassuring for this here Google-phone.

Anyway, we're more interested in that one soldier at this point rather than the army to come. So, let's see if there is more to it, as we inspect the T-Mobile G1 more closely. We take off on the next page with the design and ergonomics of the first of them Androids.

Design and construction As we already mentioned, the T-Mobile G1 has rather extraordinary design, not quite like anything else on the market. The tilted chin and the peculiar slide are the most notable design aspects. And by the way that's exactly where the whole design thing came to a complete stop. Whether it's a conscious choice to go low key and not distract the audience from what's inside, the G1 is as simple as it gets. And well, big enough to make sure it won't go unnoticed.

Most of the front panel of the phone is taken by the 3.2" 65K-color capacitive touchscreen. Being one of the key ingredients of the package, the display will be discussed in more detail a little later in this review.

On top of the display is the earpiece, while the chin below accommodates five hardware keys and a trackball.

The crowded (in touchscreen terms) navigation deck includes call and end keys, home and back buttons and the menu key. Our only grudge with those keys is that they are a bit too small and flush with the surface for our big hands.

The trackball is certainly one of the most comfortable navigation solutions, even if it has its flaws too (in gaming for example). The trackball on the T-Mobile G1 is pretty good example but just a little short of the comfort recent BlackBerry devices offer. The problem is that the G1's trackball feels quite smal and thus somewhat fails to match the lightning fast response of the BlackBerry Curve 8900 for example. On the positive side, the G1 fared a lot better than the Samsung i550 which happens to be the only other trackball device we have tested in the recent months.

The sides of the T-Mobile G1 are pretty plain with less controls than we are used to. Starting from the right the only element of interest we find is the camera key, which is located just above the bottom edge of the device.

The left side hosts the volume rocker and the microSD card slot. While we are pretty happy with the volume controls, the card slot is one of the worst bits in the phone. It has a small lid over, which can only be lifted up (quite difficult too as the finger rest is really slim) when the slider is open. Furthermore, even when you manage to open it somehow the card is located too deep for a comfortably reach (unless you have inch-long fingernails).

On the positive side, in our test the T-Mobile G1 card handled a 16GB memory card like a breeze.

The top of the G1 brings nothing but the battery cover release… or something like that. The fact is, opening the battery cover is a pull-and-pray job where you pull as gently as you can and hope it won't crack.

The miniUSB slot is located at the bottom of the T-Mobile G1 hidden under a small plastic lid. It looks like it should do a good job of keeping it clear of dust and dirt for the time you are not charging it or having it connected to a computer.

Here might just be the place to mention a really peculiar behavior we noticed with the G1. Its touchscreen kept freezing every time we connected it to a computer by anything but its very own miniUSB cable or the one of the HTC Touch Diamond we had lying around. We suspect this has something to do with the HTC proprietary 11-pin USB cables but the really strange part is the HTC Touch Diamond itself never had such problems with non-proprietary miniUSB cables.

The QWERTY Keyboard is good enough Now this is the one part about the G1 ergonomics over which our team simply couldn't reach an agreement. The problem with the G1's QWERTY keyboard is that its buttons are smaller than average making it hard for most people to get used to.

On the other hand there is more than enough spacing between them so missing by a millimeter or two will not result in a wrong press.

All in all the T-Mobile G1's keyboard does need getting used to but once you do, it gets real quick to type on. And we do mean quick, as the five-row layout has almost ruled out key combinations for the most frequently used symbols.

The backlighting of the keyboard is also good enough so your typing speed won't suffer in the dark.

Display reaches for perfection As we mentioned, the T-Mobile G1 is equipped with a 3.2" 65K-color capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution. The half VGA resolution of 320 x 480 pixels has been recently known as the iPhone resolution.

The picture quality is commendable with sharp contrast and good brightness levels on the TFT display. The 65K-color count turns a weakness on very few rare occasions when single color gradients are displayed. In all other aspects the G1 screen performs greatly.

The sunlight legibility is also flawless with the colors retained almost perfectly even when the handset is exposed to direct sunlight. The only thing that makes it worse than the Apple iPhone's display is the fact that it reflects more light, resulting in occasional rainbows on the screen.

The sensitivity of the touchscreen is also brilliant. A well-known advantage of capacitive touchscreens is their sensitivity, as they don't actually need a push to register a click. Even the lightest of touches does the trick which is probably a large part of the reason why would one buy a touchscreen phone in first place.

The only thing missing - as a stylus is not an option with capacitive touchscreens - is handwriting recognition.

Crash course in Android Android is a brand new OS, which means it doesn't carry the same kind of baggage as other smartphone platforms. Sure, it uses the Linux kernel but you'll never know it's there - even Google say the OS is not Linux. This means that you'll have to learn a few new things but the interface is very intuitive and consistent so it doesn't take long.

Things work in a similar way to other OSes but there are differences as well. For example, the "menu" key under the screen doesn't bring up what most people would think of as THE menu. It would be more appropriate to call it a "context menu" as it brings up relevant options to whatever is currently happening on the screen.

In the case of the homescreen, it brings up a bar with options for modifying its contents - add new shortcuts or widgets, change the wallpaper, launch Search or access Settings. In applications, it brings up buttons that are like soft keys with a "more" tab when the list of available options is too long.

To get to the actual Main menu you tap the virtual button at the bottom of the screen. This launches a panel with shortcuts to all the applications on the handset. Alternatively, you can drag the panel up with your finger.

Tapping is faster and simpler but, trust us, you'll be dragging it. It has an inherent "cool factor" - pulling it up is almost physical. The interface elements stick to your finger much like on the iPhone - very smooth and very slick.

There are a couple of basic gestures you won't need to learn if you've used a touchscreen phone. The first and most obvious is the simple tap. This is one of the most commonly used gestures - it activates whatever you tapped on, whether a shortcut, a button or a list item.

Next is the long press, which serves two different purposes. On the homescreen it is used for dragging shortcuts and in lists it is used to bring up a submenu for a specific list item (e.g. if you want to delete a contact).

To remove a shortcut from the homescreen, just drag it to the main menu icon, which will temporarily turn into a trashcan (it works the same way for widgets too).

The third gesture you need to know to get you going is the sweep. Quite predictably, it scrolls lists up and down or the available homescreens side to side. Multiple desktops have become quite popular, first on computers and now on mobile phones as well.

The Android homescreen has three separate desktops that actually seem like three parts of one single panoramic desktop. Eye candy is of course not forgotten - the default background is a stunning landscape (there are several wallpapers preinstalled) and the icons move a little faster than the background adding a feeling of depth and added dimension that's not to be seen on any other OS - somehow the icons look closer to you that way.

Sliding the keyboard out switches the screen to landscape but despite the change in aspect ratio, the arrangement of the icons doesn't change. That is, an icon's relative position remains the same.

Things to look out for Android has some peculiarities. It doesn't recognize the concept of "running" and "closed" applications. Instead it gives the impression that all apps are running all the time. The system may close an app that runs in the background to preserve resources but as soon as the user selects it again Android will restore it to its previous state so that the user never knows the app had actually been closed.

A pleasant surprise is that all this background activity doesn't lead to any hang-ups or slowdowns. Holding down the Home key brings up a kind of "task switcher". It's not really a task switcher, though, as some of the applications you've already started may no longer appear running for the reasons described above. Still, the task switcher is useful as it gives you access to the six most recently used apps.

Android doesn't have the typical concept of a "file system" either. You can put folders on the homescreen to help keep things organized but you can't put folders within folders. Browsing through your memory card is out of the question too. Instead, your only chance of checking what's on it is by using the respective file viewers - to check photos on the memory card open up the gallery.

It makes sense - a music player would do a much better job of navigating your music collection than a generic file browser. This however has its drawback as, say, copying a file from the memory card to the internal memory is not possible.

Here the app store - the Android Market - comes into play offering a wide range of applications (most of them free) to do what you need. But more on that later in this review.

There are some "bad" habits you need to break when using Android. For example the red receiver key doesn't bring you to the homescreen as it does on every other phone out there, instead it locks the keyboard (and screen). Another one is that typing just about anything short of a phone number requires you to open the keyboard, at least until the expected Cupcake goodness spills over the G1. The only virtual onscreen keyboard the G1 has out of the box is a basic dialer to quickly punch in a phone number.

However it's interesting to know that some of the applications that come fresh out of the Android Market have their own onscreen QWERTY keyboards.

The only thing that we found missing in this new Android line of work, is a nice and easily accessible Wireless manager - having some type of a shortcut pad for managing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the likes directly from the homescreen would have been a nice asset.

Buttons and dials There are quite a few things you can add to the homescreen. Shortcuts, folders and bookmarks are the most basic ones but you can also add shortcuts to contacts, Gmail labels and even playlists. There is also widget support but you get just three widgets at this point: clock, search and picture frame. You can't download new ones from the Market just yet.

The search button on the hardware keypad (the one with the magnifying glass on) activates context relevant search - in the homescreen it's Google search, in the Gmail app it searches the mail, when browsing contacts it quite naturally searches for contacts.

The only place where it doesn't do what you'd expect it to is in the browser - it doesn't search on the page but instead brings up Google search again. The other gripe we have is that it doesn't search for items on the device.

The search button also moonlights as a quick launch button. For example, Search + B launches the browser, Search + C brings up the contacts and so on. You can also assign your own shortcuts in the Settings menu.

Additionally, there are shortcuts using other keyboard combinations. A number of Menu key + letter button combinations work as shortcuts for apps, while Menu + W in the browser closes a tab just like in computer browsers.

One big advantage of Android is the notification area. As usual, there's a thin bar at the top of the screen with status info about battery, signal strength and others such as Bluetooth or missed events.

But if you slide it down you get a list of all recent notifications - that's the so called notifications area. Tapping one of the listed notifications takes a context relevant action - for instance, a tap on a notification of a successful installation would launch that application; a finished download notification will open the file and so on.

Since you can open the notification area from wherever the top bar is visible, new events won't interrupt your work. You can slide the tray down like a window blind just enough to see more details about what has happened and if it's not important you can let it slide back up and continue where you left off.

Phonebook has it all The phonebook can store quite a lot of information. It lets you input numbers for work and home, and you can even create custom labels. There is of course an email field and you can assign a custom ringtone.

Something of special interest is the option to send calls directly to voicemail. You can also add IM nickname info to the contact as well as a postal address.

You can "star" a contact, which puts it in the Favorites tab. Also, in the Gmail account there's a special group called "Starred in Android" where these contacts go automatically.

Adding a photo to a contact is quite easy: when you select a photo, a cropping tool comes up allowing you to use any photo you want. Adding a photo has a pleasant "side effect" - if you put a dialing shortcut for the contact on the screen, it uses the photo as an icon.

Email also has a tab that works just like the ones for numbers. The rest of the information (if any) is displayed under that.

The T-Mobile G1 doesn't support quick dial but that's easily remedied by adding contact shortcuts to the screen. This gives it more flexibility than quick dial, though at the cost of an extra click. The more interesting part is syncing the Google cloud of servers. Your contacts as well as calendar events and etc. all get synced with your Gmail account, all done over the air. Editing your contacts in your browser is easier than on the phone and provides just as many options. This takes care of fully syncing your contacts as Gmail has an option to import contacts from Outlook, Yahoo and Hotmail, while the Apple Address Book requires a utility called "A to G". Telephony Audio quality during a call is perfect and reception is quite good despite the signal strength bar underestimating the signal strength a bit.

To dial a number without looking up your contacts you use the Dialer - a virtual onscreen numpad. The hardware QWERTY keyboard gets much involved in telephony too. Hitting a number key on the hardware keyboard in standby mode will bring up the dialer while hitting a letter key brings up the contacts.

In Android the phonebook, call log and dialer are all part of the same application. In the phonebook you can search for contacts by gradually typing out a name but this doesn't work in the dialer. Searching by typing the number doesn't work either.

The call log shows all the dialed, received and missed calls all in one.

Messaging the Google way One of the strengths of the T-Mobile G1 is its messaging department. It has all one can dream of, except for the ability to set up MS Exchange mail; however, it should be just a matter of time before the developers fix that flaw.

The T-Mobile G1 can handle all common types of messages - SMS, MMS and email. Instant messaging is quite well-heeled with AIM, Google Talk, Windows live messenger and Yahoo! Messenger all at hand.

Before we go into details, we'd like to go back to the interesting way that incoming messages are handled. You will see no notifications on the homescreen but rather a tiny SMS icon on the status bar at the top. When you tap this bar and drag it down you will see the network provider and all the incoming notifications such as incoming mails, calls, messages, etc.

If you have only one SMS message, it displays the sender and part of the text. If you have two or more messages are, you are simply informed of the number and the SMS section is opened once you hit the icon.

The SMS and MMS messaging section is quite straightforward and simple at first glance - there are no folders here, just a new message tab.

The messages are organized into threads, the newest message placed at the bottom, just like the Apple iPhone 3G. There are no bubbles here but the latest message in the chat history is colored in light blue. At the bottom of the display is the type-to-compose box and the send key of course. There is a counter on the right which is displayed once you have 16 or fewer characters left out of the limit of 160.

Mutimedia: image gallery The T-Mobile G1 has a decent multimedia department, but that's all. One of our big disappointments is that the G1 doesn't have a preinstalled video player, which is now considered a basic feature on most mobile phones - users obviously have to pay the price for enjoying the Andorid OS at an early level of development.

The G1 gallery is a standard one, while the music player has a high level of both performance and usability. It's a pity that the audio quality is not as good as we expected.

Let's have a look at the picture gallery, a standard application on any phone. We've seen all kinds of galleries with lots of features and functions: the gallery on Nokia's N series offers superb usability and handling; Sony Ericsson and Samsung also rate highly while LG offer fluid touch experience. Unfortunately, the G1 gallery ranks somewhere just below Sony Ericsson and Samsung.

The gallery automatically looks for images, no matter where they are stored. If they are separated in different folders, images will appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the relevant folder, which is very convenient - just like a file manager.

Right next to the name is a number indicating how many images are in that folder. Each sub-gallery has a thumbnail, which displays either the latest image (if the folder contains less than four images) or four thumbs if there are at least four files in this folder. There is no way to change these view options.

Mutimedia: music player The T-Mobile G1 has a very comfortable and capable music player. The player supports the main file formats, such as MP3, WAV, WMA, and AAC and is among the exceptions that can be set to run in the background. One of its major drawbacks is the lack of equalizer presets or other features like stereo widening, enhanced bass or visualizations.

Another let down concerning music is there is no standard 3.5mm audio jack on the G1 and they didn't even provide a miniUSB to 3.5mm adapter in the retail package. Don't worry though, as you can easily snatch one online for several bucks. As the G1 is manufactured by HTC all miniUSB adapters made for HTC will do here as well.

The main display has four big icons for artists, albums, songs, and playlists. At the very bottom of the screen is the now playing section with the author and the track name. The play icon is not active, i.e. it does not start or pause the track but serves as a shortcut to the track itself.

The artists section lists the performers in the library. Indication of the number of albums and tracks are right under the artist's name. The specific tree structure allows you to see the different albums and the tracks in them and album art is supported.

If you select a track it starts playing immediately. On the right side of the album label there are shortcuts for now playing list, shuffle and repeat. Each time you press a key a small tooltip gets displayed over the play key to indicate what action has been taken. On top of this there are the contextual menus where you get additional access and features such as library, add to playlists, use as a ringtone, delete, etc.

Uninspiring audio quality The T-Mobile G1 achieved about average scores on most readings in our traditional audio quality test. The handset has tolerable audio output which considering the high price tag is hardly a great achivement. It has cut-off bass frequencies, probably due to some kind of high-pass filter meant to improve sound on small size headphones. The distortion levels are passable but not great by any means.

Where is the video player? The G1 is said to run one of the most advanced OSes around, and yet it doesn't have any video player preinstalled. Having in mind it's the first device with the new OS, and since there are already some free video players that can be downloaded off the Android Market, we will pass that with a smile. We really hope the next device powered by Andorid will have that fixed.

We were somewhat surprised to find out that there is a sneaky way to play 3gp clips without any installed player. What you need is email a 3gp video to your Gmail account and then open it by using the "Preview" option in your email client.

As far as we could tell, the G1 only supports the H.263 codec. This means that you will be able to play 3GP and MPEG4 clips that are encoded with the codec, but nothing else. We are not quite sure how this will turn out, but we really hope developers will find a way to extend the video support a little further.

Here's a third-party video player by by Jeff Hamilton we downloaded additionaly. It supports auto rotate, has a simple but efficient user interface and is quite stable.

A 3 megapixel camera to rule them all To be honest we expected a pretty mediocre snapper with limited capabilities on the T-Mobile G1. We've never seen a nice camera by HTC.

Yet surprisingly, the G1 delivers one of the highest quality 3MP action on a phone and it can successfully compete with and in some cases exceed the 3MP sensors in Sony Ericsson and Nokia handsets.