It's hard to believe, but rumors of a "Googlephone" have been floating around since 2006. . Needless to say, it's been a long, slow ride to get to Android, the Open Handset Alliance, and ultimately the T-Mobile G1. If we said expectations were high for the introduction of this device, it would be an understatement. It's not every day that a company with the stature of Google announces it's getting into the phone game, and it's certainly not every day that an honest-to-goodness innovator comes along. That last time the team at Engadget got this stoked for a device, it was a little something called the iPhone -- and you know how that turned out. Will Android and the G1 live up to the hype? Is this the first coming of a serious new contender in the mobile space, or has the triple threat of Google, HTC, and T-Mobile not delivered on their promises? We've put both the device and the software through its paces to bring you the definitive review of the T-Mobile G1 and Android.
Starting with the harware part the first thing that strikes you about the G1 design is its... well, surprising lack of "design." In a world filled with shiny silver / black sticks, and consumed by an unhealthy competition to be the absolute thinnest, the G1 stands out with its decidedly trend-bucking, quirky styling. That's not to say there's nothing to love here -- quite the opposite. The device bares a kind of charming, retro-future look; like a gadget in a 1970's sci-fi movie set in the year 2038. The smooth, round edges make the phone seem eminently approachable, and HTC (and design partner Google) forgo single-button simplicity for functionality, dotting the phone with all manner of hardware controls. One thing that's clear is that the phone isn't trying to break any dieting records -- but while the G1 isn't super-thin, the thickness is by no means a deal breaker. At 0.62 inches it hardly measures up to standards set by similar devices like the iPhone 3G (0.48 inches) or not-so-similar (yet venerable) RAZR V3 at 0.55 inches closed, but it won't have any trouble sliding into your pocket. Getting it to slide into your heart, however, is strictly going to be a matter of taste; this form factor definitely inspires strong feelings.
The Software part and User Interface:
Accurate or not, the phrase "it just works" has been closely tied to the Apple camp for eons -- and obviously, the iPhone tries to ooze that mantra from its every pore. Without ever having made a phone, though, Google already had a leg up in delivering on this promise to handsets by owning a service platform that virtually everyone uses in one capacity or another. Sure, plenty of people use MobileMe, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the Google juggernaut -- and even if it did, Apple hadn't counted on making seamlessly integrated, synchronized services part of its mobile platform from the get-go.
But what does that translate to in terms of usability? It's difficult to accurately describe how utterly painless it is to set up and use the G1 for the first time: you just enter your Google account's username and password and you're off to the races. If you don't have an account -- well, first of all, welcome to civilization. Second of all, no worries -- you can create one in less than five minutes' time right from the comfort of your phone. If you already actively use Google Calendar, Contacts, and Gmail, your data just seamlessly appears after a couple minutes of initial synchronization, quietly and with no fuss. Magic.
Problem is, most people that use Gmail aren't also actively using and managing Google Contacts. The app regularly gets panned as a tacked-on afterthought in Gmail, and we'll just say it straight out: it's truly awful. If you've used it, you know what we're talking about -- it makes managing contacts a laborious pain, and provides only the bare minimum of tools to get your info in order. Like it or not, you're joined to it at the hip the moment you make this platform a part of your life. If you're not keeping on top of it, it'll automatically add entries for anyone it decides you're emailing frequently, which means that over time you end up with this massive, unruly, and essentially useless list of email addresses. By default, this junk all gets transferred to your phone, making for an intimidating, frustrating experience the first time you open your little black book from the G1. It's easy to create a new group of Android-specific contacts -- and smartly, the phone also allows you to show only contacts that have phone number associated with them -- but we would've liked to have seen a wizard either on the web or phone side that makes cleaning up your contact list a breeze.
Despite the shortcomings, Google has still managed to completely eliminate one of the biggest pain points in the wireless world: changing phones. Even with ActiveSync, iSync, Intellisync, WhateverSync, the process of bringing a new phone online has usually been hairy at best, largely because you're moving across heterogeneous platforms. Sometimes the sync goes the wrong way and wipes out data on your PC, sometimes data just flat-out refuses to transfer, and quite often, you've got to physically connect the device to your computer to make it all happen.
If you're not using a smartphone, the situation's even worse; sometimes your carrier offers a solution for transferring contacts, sometimes you can get stuff where you need it to go over Bluetooth or the little chunk of storage on your SIM, but any way you slice it, it's not pretty. With Android, Google has the luxury of being able to take the monolithic approach -- you're always precisely one login and about sixty seconds away from having your entire world downloaded to you over the aether. For end users, the benefits of storing data in the cloud are more tangible than ever. That "cloud" just happens to belong to Google, and once you're in the ecosystem, it's hard to get out. Google AdWord revenue, secured.
User Interface :
he G1's interface skin -- Android's default for touchscreens and only released skin thus far -- is thoroughly modern and attractive, but its high-contrast, almost cartoonish look might be a turn-off for some. In a sick, twisted way, that dovetails nicely with the fact that Google's stonewalling the enterprise market for the moment by leaving out support for VPN, Microsoft Exchange, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server; it's just a hip-looking, totally approachable UI that doesn't reek one bit of corporate starch. We'd still like to see a ton more configurability here, though. Google's own "Spare Parts" app, a free download from the Market, gets the ball rolling by allowing you to change the system text size -- something that clearly should've been including as part of Android's standard build, especially considering accessibility concerns and the fact that the default size is pretty freakin' huge. For example, in its shipping configuration the Settings application can only show six menu items at a time in the portrait orientation, and Gmail shows a fraction of an email more than that. On a 3.2-inch 480 x 320 display, that's just not enough for everyone. To add insult to injury, the current version of Spare Parts is buggy -- if you change screen orientation, text size reverts to the default.
Android's easy to use, but it's not always consistent. For folks coming from other platforms (which we guess is everyone, since Android's brand spanking new), that could be a little frustrating and make the learning curve steeper than it has to be. Here's an example: to delete a contact, you long-press their entry. The selection highlight will fade from orange to white, and after a moment, a contextual pop-up menu will appear, where you can choose "Delete contact." Okay, that's all well and good -- but try using the same paradigm in the alarm clock. No dice, right? Doesn't matter how long you hold your thumb on that alarm, sport, it's not going to give you a pop-up menu. Here, you inexplicably have to short-press the alarm, which takes you to another screen; once you're here, you push the Menu button and choose "Delete alarm." It's not hard, it's just needlessly different.
Speaking of long presses, we did have some problems with the G1 being unable to distinguish between a long press and a scroll motion. The instant the phone detects that your finger has moved, it kills the notion of the long press in progress until you lift your finger off the screen and try again. Theoretically that's not a problem, but it's really easy to accidentally move your thumb just a millimeter too far while waiting for a pop-up menu to appear, which triggers like a one-pixel scroll of the list instead.
On the flipside, these same long presses we're complaining about enable copy/paste between any two text fields in the system, so we've got to give them their proper due. Granted, we frequently hear "I've never used copy/paste on my phone in my life," but we think the root of that attitude stems from the fact that many users are accustomed to phones that don't support it or aren't powerful enough to make it worthwhile. Android's at that level, though -- and with the G1 clearly taking the so-called "Sidekick Pro" market head on, we think these same folks are going to use it, like it, and refuse to go back to a platform that doesn't support it. All it takes is a few copies of lengthy snippets from an email to a note or a calendar for it to earn its keep, as far as we're concerned.
