It’s been a week now, so I am prepared to offer my opinion on T-mobile’s G1 Android phone. Overall, I am still glad I bought the G1. The HTC phone hardware gets a B, while the Android operating system gets closer to an A. Here are a few thoughts:
Battery life. As expected, the battery life on the G1 is pretty poor. After a couple hours of heavy use, only 25% of the battery remained. After talking to some of my friends the battery life seems comparable to the iPhone. Hopefully I will be able to drop a better battery into it as they improve.
Android Market Apps (with some bugs). The G1 comes with just a few Google-based applications plus calculator, camera, etc — but new apps are appearing on the Android Market every day. I don’t have time to go into all of the ones I’ve installed right now (I think I’ve installed a couple dozen at this point), but I like what I see so far. Many still have some bugs, but I was expecting that. Updates seem to be coming out regularly, and most of the popular apps are quite stable. All of them are free as of right now, so I guess you get what you pay for 🙂 The top 3 apps on my wishlist are a flickr image uploader, a geocaching app that tracks caches offline, and a turn-by-turn navigation app. My top suggestion for the Android team is to allow a way to exit apps. But I’m sure someone will put out an application killer app soon.
That’s it for now. At some point I’ll review my favorite 3 apps, including one that could be the start of a really fun location-based game.
Hey Tom, good to see you on Halloween. Just wondering does the google phone work well in Logan. No 3G I guess? http://www.t-mobileg1.com/3g.aspx
Does the iphone get 3G in Logan? I really have no interest in getting an iphone though.
I heard that 3G was coming to Logan in Q1 of 2009, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then I’ll have to be content with EDGE, which isn’t that big of a problem because I am usually around wifi and it connects that way. BTW it’s cool to know you are in the neighborhood. If you ever want to try out the G1 let me know.