Everybody in Silicon Valley seems to have an odd love affair with the iPhone and while it is an impressive product I couldn’t resist the opportunity to be a bit different and buy myself the much derided G1 (aka Google Phone) by T-Mobile. One month later I am a tad jealous of the strange love affair people have with their iPhone. The instant reviewers of the blogosphere quickly panned the G1 — while at times I felt like jumping I felt like I needed to make the G1 part of my life for more then a few hours or even days. Here is what I found:
G1 Hardware: Overall lacks polish and fit n’ finish I would expect from a $150+ device.
- Keyboard: Angled section forces right thumb into uncomfortable position. The keys themselves are
- Thickness: If you miss phones from 1996 you’ll like the thickness of the G1.
- Power recharge input : Flimsy plastic cover cap. Why does the most used input require a plastic cover?
- Keyboard slider arm: Arm that slides the keyboard open/close position is very flimsy piece of plastic. When expanding/collapsing the arm its snap is anything but gentle, and I am fairly certain that in a matter of months it will fly off its hinges.
- Battery: Rarely make it through a full day when my usage is relatively intense — multiple phone calls, checking email, and browsing the web. For an enterprise user used to the battery life of a Blackberry battery this will prove unusable for most.
- Buttons: Too many. I constantly confuse the Home and Back button — especially when I am working in landscape mode.
- Track ball: Too small and sensitive — when browsing the trackball is the cause of many erroneous clicks and movements.
Android OS: First, impressed by the overall responsiveness of the OS – for a version one that is not easy and it deserves credit. Yet, the UI experience leaves plenty of room for improvement. Pull Out Tray and Menu button are the biggest culprits, but there are a plethora of small stuff that when combined create a very average experience.
- Pull-out tray: I suspect many users will never discover all the apps. Opening the tray requires a cumbersome select and pull motion – for all the value that sits within this tray one would expect easier and more natural access.
- Menu Button: Too many applications require constant use of the Menu button — this is partially poor design on the part of the Apps, but I find myself engaging this button constantly when I am in Browser, Mail, etc. These actions should appear/disappear when needed. For example, upon reaching the bottom of a web-page display a “Bookmark” action.
- Applications: Why do I need to load sixty applications to delete one. If there is an easier way that somebody is aware of please do tell.
- Search Apps: Nearly impossible to discover how to search all your apps — with the tray open you just start typing — but it took me a few weeks to discover this feature. After the user has added say 40 apps why not expose a search box that can be easily dismissed by the user or provide a gentle hint once the user has a certain number of apps.
- Notifications: Little icons appear when an email arrives, app download completes, etc. The icons themselves are usually useless — they don’t convey the type of notification they are supposed to represent. Additionally, it seems like anytime anything happens a notification appears — I really don’t care that it finished downloading an App. Finally, opening the notification tray requires very nimble fingers.
- Clock: Why by default does the home screen include a clock that takes up half the screen real-estate when their a clock in the upper right hand corner that is perfectly fine. I don’t get it.
Core Applications: Each of these deserve their own separate post as they are core to the overall experience – will save that for another day. Here is the Twitter version:
- Browser: One of the bigger disappointments of the device. Mistakes gestures as simple as scroll and zoom. Search box and Address Box are distinct entities when they should be tightly integrated (see Chrome for a good start). Finally, exclusive search provider — in some markets Yahoo! is actually superior to Google and
- Mail: Gmail should place the Reply and Reply All button in the Menu option as otherwise it forces you to scroll through the entire email to simply hit Reply.
Android Market
- Early start is disappointing, but withhold judgement until they have broader reach and Google providers a monetization solution.
- App quality is extremely poor: I have uninstalled 80% of the apps as they were utter crap.
- Limited selection: I am begging for something interesting— how about the Wall Street Journal Reader (like the one for Blackberry)
The T-Mobile G1 is 0.67″ thick according to PhoneScoop.com. Many other current models are that thick or thicker, including the HTC Touch Pro, BlackBerry Pearl Flip, Motorola Krave, and Motorola Rapture. It is also in par with previous HTC models with slide-out QWERTY keyboards, such as the Wing and the 8525, both of which are thicker. There is little question that the G1 is thicker than many phones out there, but the “1996″ quip is rather inaccurate.
The “pull-out tray” can be opened by a single tap on the tray’s tab, on the bottom of the home screen. No dragging is required.
To delete an application, open the Settings app, and go into Applications > Manage Applications. If you feel you want to do this more frequently, install AnyCut and put a shortcut for it on your home screen.
If you’re a busy Gmail user, you’ll want to get handy with the keyboard (that’s one of the big pluses of the G1). I process my email every half hour or so. Open keyboard. Click on first message, then press “y” to archive. Press Enter to read next message. Want it even easier? If you can tell from the header that you don’t need to open, just press “y” and it will Archive it.
Press “r” to reply. Press “a” to reply-all. Go to Gmail help for a bunch more keyboard shortcuts.
I can process 20 emails in about a minute; almost as fast as on my laptop.
And don’t forget, the Notifier is awesome, allowing you to glance at an incoming message, often without even pulling it down!
@Mark: Regarding your point on thickness. The Pearl is a flip phone which has other benefits and therefore not directly comparable. None of the other phones you mention (HTC and Motorola) are what I consider “tier 1″ Smartphones (Blackberry and iPhone level) and my expectations for the G1 were “tier 1″ material.
The pull-out tray does require only a single tap — corrected in the post. Thanks.
Deleting an application is still too complex. If you have 60 apps it takes 5 to 8 seconds to loads the apps and their is not sort or search function to find your app.
@Scott: I do use Gmail as a secondary email. Thanks for some of the shortcut tips.
The criticisms are pretty harsh and most software concerns are premature.
There are big Android updates upcoming that alleviate some of your concerns and the others simply are for the open development community to build and provide.
The lag in some of these premiere applications may be due to the Android Market waiting until mid January to allow paid applications.
Also remember the G1 is a FIRST generation Android device that will have kinks to work out like the initial iPhone.
,Michael Martin
http://www.googleandblog.com/
Must admit I feel you being a bit harsh on the G1.
Most of your points are valid, but they are not exactly show stoppers.
The one point I would agree on is the battery life, thats just not acceptable. Even though I have got used to charging twice a day, its still a pain in the neck…and means I cant rely on it as my only phone!