I've been using the Google Android phone for just under a week now, and there seems to be a lot of interest in my impressions. First off, since you will be viewing this gadget through my eyes, here's a little background. I owned the original iphone for over 9 months, and really loved it. I had to sell it before the apps came out, but I was a heavy user of the core functions (email, etc.) and especially the browser. Also, I've only had EDGE on the iphone, and currently have EDGE on the G1 as well, so no unfairness there. So my impression of the iphone is colored by the fact I never got to play with the apps on it, but I have played with my brother's iPod touch apps quite a bit, and am quite familiar with the interface style and speed. I have used seriously on my main work machine XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Red Hat, and currently Mac OSX. I love to try new OSs, programs, and ways of interacting with data. In this review, I'm going to quickly go over the high points of the hardware, OS, and some of the apps. All the images are taken from my actual phone using the devkit, or taken by myself.
The Hardware
The HTC G1 phone is smaller than it looks in pictures, although it doesn't even compare to the slim trim iphone in beauty, but makes up for it with usability. The slide is smooth, and the phone is light, but pretty solid feeling in the hand. The body is coated with a kind of rubberized texture, similar to the back of the original Zune 30GB. (Yes, I seem to have a penchant for owning downtrodden unpopular hardware. :P ) The touchscreen feels about as sensitive as the iphone which is very impressive, but lacks multitouch in the OS. The hardware keyboard is well laid out, and works well. I was a big fan of the touchscreen keyboard on the iphone, and could type really quite fast on it, but I'm able to get reasonable WPM on the G1 as well. No complaints there, and I really like the dedicated search button. The keyboard also allows for dedicated keyboard shortcuts, a fact I'll get into later when I discuss the OS. The camera works fine under good lighting conditions. It's able to close focus, a boon for the barcode scanning apps in the android market. Sound quality is good on the speakers, and during calls, no complaints there.
One thing that may annoy you is the device is not very pretty. It's functional, but won't turn any heads by shiny aluminum goodness. Also, there are hordes of forum posts talking about squeaking, slanted screens and the like. Mine squeaks just slightly, because of a small lip on the hardware that rubs when it's closed. Some people have exacto'd this lip off, but it's not annoying enough for me to take a knife to my device. You might want to find a friend with one and fool around with the hardware if you think that might be a dealbreaker. It's not for me.Some people have accused the G1 of being schizophrenic in it's control scheme, and with a touchscreen, keyboard, and trackball I can see why. However, it makes perfect sense when you consider this is the first hardware for an operating system. App developers have to account for all 3 control schemes, making apps more available for future handsets that perhaps might be touch only, or trackball focused, etc. I personally don't mind the multiple inputs at all, trackball is great for switching between fields on forms, and for selecting precise locations in google maps.
My only complaints with the hardware are battery life (for such a big device, couldn't we get maybe 4 more hours out of it?) and the lack of a headphone jack. They aren't deal breakers for me, I'm used to charging every day, and I never intended to use this as a media device. However... when flash finally comes to the browser, my access to my www.lala.com account will give my G1 more music than my original iphone. (Or somebody *please* make an app for it!)
Android OS
The OS is solid. Young, but solid. For those who don't remember how many times the 1st gen iPhone crashed, it's a better than that so far... none of the core functions have failed on me so far, though quite a few user made programs have crashed on me. It has always recovered though, no reboot sequences or anything like that. When you turn the phone on, you are greeted with a very servicable home screen, nothing fancy. The graphics are crisp, clear, and clean, icons and text being very readable. The core functions work wonderfully.
The gmail app is the best mobile email experience I've ever had, bar none. Calendar and other applications work well too, but gmail is my favorite. It's fast, has all the features I need, excellent search just like the webclient, and is very easy to deal with large volumes of mail. The push email works brilliantly, I frequently get the email on my device several seconds before it appears on my desktop web client.
The calendar isn't as powerful to the desktop web client, but it works just fine as well. I would like for there to be the "Quick Add" feature in the future, that would add alot of functionality to it, also there isn't a search, which is odd. It's a fine app though, with views of your month having a little graph showing the hours, weekly view, and daily agenda. IM also works just fine, being a basic google chat. There is another app on the market to handle IM (meebo), but 99% of my chatting happens on google chat, so I really haven't tried it.Contacts also works really well. If you are on the home page, and you start typing it will immediately begin searching your contacts for the things you type, a really good way to start calling someone, or shoot them an email, or even check if you have them in your address book. For syncing to my desktop, I am using www.soocial.com to sync my google contacts with my mac address book.app.
The GPS enabled maps is solid, runs smoothly and quickly. Directions work well, are easily readable. I got lost the other night, and was able to easily find my way back using the GPS"Current Location" as a starting point. The Compass mode of the streetview is just icing on the cake, and is a good way to enjoy "visiting" other cities.
The youtube app works really well. I can't really use it over EDGE, I understand it works quite well over 3G, and it certainly works over wifi. The image quality is outstanding, I was really surprised. I think it has to do with youtube rolling out the high quality/HD video over the past weekend, but I was watching an animation a couple of days ago and didn't see any compression on the image. Very impressive.Another great feature of the phone is that google search is one keypress away at all times. There is a dedicated search button (as I mentioned before) on the keyboard that serves as the shortcut key, but also triggers various searches in different programs. If nothing is selected, and you are on the home screen, it jumps to a google search widget. This can be really, really helpful.
Browsing is quite good. It's definitely not as polished as the iphone's safari, but it's barely just short of that. There are some weird decisions here, like clicking on the URL at the top of the browser doesn't bring down the URL typing window. (You have to go through the menu, or use the keyboard shortcut Menu+L). The same goes for bookmarks and refresh. I guess the only explanation is this phone was made by linux geeks, not designers. And I personally like it that way. I find myself moving much faster on the Android browser than I ever did on the iphone, despite the fact that the iphone browser had gestures and loaded just a touch faster. As for the rest of the browsers features, the scrolling works well, the zooming and full screen works great. Sites render very well, I haven't had any weird experiences yet.
The most important part of the android experience is the multitasking. For the past 4 or so days, I've been leaving my laptop off, and doing all my feed reading, email, chat, and web browsing almost exclusively from the G1. The power of the Android OS multitasking is the absolute work of genius called the notification bar. It displays icons based on some of the apps you run (such as twitter apps), as well as downloads, IMs, emails and OS updates. This appears on the top of nearly every app, is a great way of telling you what's going on. I'm able to chat with three people (on two different apps!), write an email on microsoft webmail, respond on gmail, go through RSS on google reader, and follow twitter simultaenously. Try doing that on an iphone! Whenever an event happens, it displays up in the bar, along with a short line describing the occurence (IMs display the first few lines, missed calls give the number/contact name). I drag the shutter down with my finger, and click the event I want to respond to. It works flawlessly, and is possibly the finest part of the Android OS.
There are a few complaints I have. Some apps use a long press to perform "right-click" actions, such as copy, paste, and delete. And some apps use the menu button. I wish that they would all make up there minds, for usabilities sake. The iphone's UI is successfull because actions are simplified, and are the same across apps. Android's young, open platform is a little shaky, it would be nice for google to publish some docs dictating what actions and buttons should be mapped to what, just for continuity's sake.
The one thing you have to remember when using the Android G1, is that it is designed pretty heavily with keyboard navigation and control in mind. Learn the shortcuts, set keyboard shortcuts for your favorite apps, and you will find yourself flying around faster than you thought possible on a phone. For instance, on the iphone, the steps for sending an email:
- Slide your finger over the lock
- Find the mail button push it
- Move your finger to the Compose button
- Flip open the phone.
- Press Search + G.
- Press Menu + C
The iphone and other phones have to present all the information and control visually to you. Nothing wrong with that, and it makes the iphone a joy and a pleasure to use. The G1 assumes you are willing to learn the phone, and that makes it great for a geek such as myself, but don't expect your grandmother to be able to use it as easily.
The Apps
The Android Market is in infancy. There are a few great apps with tons of promise, that really use the power of the the platform– and there are some half baked tetris clones. Some of my highlights on the list:
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Compare Everywhere
This app lets you scan barcodes, then lists out locations where you can obtain the item, as well it's price on quite a few online stores. It works *really* nicely, even over EDGE. Every once in a while you'll run into an item that won't be in the database, but it's a great start. Highly recommended.
imeem
An online radio app, similar to last.fm or pandora. It works as advertised, even over EDGE, and has a very nice interface that provides information on the band, related bands, and the track itself.
Shazam
This is the same app as on the iphone. Record 15 secs of a song on the radio or on a speaker, and recognize it. This one is really fun, and I really enjoy breaking it out, even if I know the song's name already. It provides links to buying the song, the artist's myspace, and other links, as well as getting the album art, artist, and other info.
PicSay!
This app is a basic image editor, allowing you to add props like sunglasses and hats, speech bubbles, special effects, distortions, and other fun effects to your G1 images. Really fun for posting a quick hilarious image to your blog. The touch screen controls are really powerful, and make good use of the G1's abilities.
Many more apps are in the works, and the market is quickly getting larger and larger. It's a good opportunity for developers however as alot of functionality is waiting to be added. There isn't a really good todo app yet, for instance, and although the camera on the G1 is capable of video recording, there are no apps that do that yet. As the android market is completely (hopefully) wide open to developers, I look forward to seeing what else they add. I hope to add some myself. I expect the market to look a little bit more professional as soon as google enables paid apps. I wouldn't be surprised if there are quite a few nice apps that are holding off till then.
Conclusions
Is the G1 better than the iphone? No. It's a completely different animal. If you are looking for an extremely easy to use phone, that will absolutely make sense to you right off the bat, this may not be your phone unless you are a lifehacking linux/command line/keyboard shortcut/hacking/macro guy. The huge feature set of the handset, combined with an open source, free app market OS that is focused on multitasking and usability makes this the perfect phone for those of us who are willing to learn by breaking and building.
The phone is a "keeper" for me. Granted, I'm a google nut, I used all the services before the phone came out, and I'm a huge multitasker. If you are not already a gmail/google docs/google calendar/google reader user, you may want to try out those services before you buy the phone. The big hitch in getting into the services is managing your contacts, google's contact manager in gmail is notoriously weird. (It often adds everybody you have ever emailed. If you haven't paid attention to the contacts in the past, you may need to do some pruning) I use the afore mentioned www.soocial.com to sync my mac's address book.app and gmail, thus pushing my contacts to my phone. It's worked really well so far.For me, considering what the Android OS is offering, and where it's going, it's not whether or not you should get the G1 Android, but whether you should get this Android phone, or wait for a newer version. If you are considering developing apps, I would get the G1 now. You need to get on board and start working with it as soon as possible, and the multiplicity of input devices make trouble shooting for touch and non-touch devices easier.
If you have any more specific questions, be sure and ask in the comments, I'll try and update the review and get back with you as soon as I can.
