My G1 review

[LordKurgan]

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to give everyone my own review of the G1. Thanks to Vincent I was first able to play with the G1 before the NYC launch party at Starbucks. Then thanks to him again, he then invited me to the G1 Launch party. You can read about the launch party here http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f...ch-party-2696/

I was lucky enough to receive my Black G1 yesterday morning at 10am. So I've had just about two full days with the phone now. Yesterday I spent most of the day playing with the phone, learning its features and digging through the menu's. The only thing I changed on the phone was the memory card I installed a kingston class 4 8GB card. I also turned down the screen brightness to 1/4.

My first impressions of the phone and design:

The phone is smaller then I thought it would be. It's also not to heavy. It feels solid in the hand. Its feels close to the Sidekick or BB Curve. It seems a little skinnier then the Iphone. Opening the keyboard is very snappy. Its pretty close to the Sidekick but doesn't feel so cheap. I'm hoping its not like the Sidekick I've seen lots of broken slide mechanism. The "chin" is useful and doesn't get in the way of typing at all. If you lay the phone screen side down the "chin" gives just enough lift to the G1 that the screen and the trackball doesn't touch the surface below. I have pretty big hands. The keyboard is pretty good it has more keys then most other cell phone QWERTY keyboards. I do wish the keys would be just a little bit higher. They lay pretty flat. The screen look great and the touch screen works very well. I had a few miss selects here and there. I'm guessing thats normal for a touch screen.

Usage:

Last night I plugged the G1 into the charger when the battery level was down to 3%. After a full night charge I unplugged it around 8:30am. I checked my email I received overnight and then plugged in the stock headphones. I turned on the mp3 player and listened to my tunes on my train ride to work. My train ride is about 40 minutes half of the ride is underground. Through out the day I made/received a few phone calls (around 10) most were less then 5 minutes long. I also had 3 missed calls and two voicemails. I sent and received 8 txt messages. I have 3 email accounts setup on the phone. Gmail (phones default) One POP3 account and one IMAP. They are set to pull emails every 10 minutes. I checked a few sites time to time. I was showing off the phone a lot today. I had to open the screen like 100 times. My favorite app to show off was Shopsavvy. I had to scan like 15 books today. I also installed 2 apps today Anycut and Compare Everywhere. I showed off google maps street view once and google maps twice. (GPS was off) I also played Bonsai Blast for like 7 minutes. I showed a coworker where the memory card is but I never took the card out. I just opened the little door. After I did that I was getting card read errors so I ejected the card and reinstalled it. It still didn't work. I did a restart and it seems to read the card just fine now. I got home around 8:30pm so you could say I used the phone for 12 hours. The phone battery level reached 15% and asked to be plugged in. Last night I was able to get 3 1/2 hours more at 15% before the phone reached 3% and demended I plug it in so I did.

Issues:

Phone Contacts Pictures:

• The contacts picture doesn't always show when they call me and when I call them.
• It wont show a callers picture till they are connected.
• If it doesn't show a callers picture when I'm on the phone it shows the picture as soon as I hit the call end button. It then shows there picture then green box around it turns red and then disapears.

Gmail push: Very slow 5-10 minutes to push it to the phone.

Email pull:

• It sometimes doesn't pull emails even when you have it set to.
• POP3 and IMAP email isnt downloaded to the phone at all only headers are so if you got no internet no email reading.
• Gmail seems to allow you to reread emails that you have already read but not new ones with out the net.
• If I leave outlook open on my desktop and it downloads my mail (I have it set to leave a copy on the server) I didnt read the email yet so it hasn't been checked as read. The phone doesn't notify me that I have a new email. My Curve and Dash both did.
• The phone doesn't register when I've already read an email on the phone sometimes. I'll get a another pop up like 10 minutes later showing the same email as unread.

Email Options:

• There are almost none.
• There seems to be no way to tell the phone only download the last few days or last month of email.
• It tries to download all the headers which has made the email app crash a few times. My IMAP box has around 300 emails in it.

No Spell Check: Come on!!! No spell check?

GPS: Works randomly. No option to turn it on inside of an app. You have to go to the settings to turn it on.

Status Light: Works sometimes

MP3 Ring tones: You have to add each one to the phones list through the music player by setting the tone as the default first.

Browser: No choice to start zoomed out of page. No tap to zoom? The only way to get the zoom buttons up is to move around the page.

Google Docs: There is none!!

Pictures: Every image on the SD card gets added to the picture app. Sounds great but some apps like TuneWiki saves album art to the memory card and that gets added to my pictures!

Power Management: There is none! The phone should be able to turn on/off things when need. Like 3G do you really need 3G on to receive calls, email, txt, IM's etc. The phones battery life would be a lot better if 3G was in demand. I open the browser and the phone turns on 3G. Same goes with Wifi and GPS

Close:
I do like the phone a lot so far. All the issues I listed above can all be fixed with updates or by apps. It's just a matter of time.

I hope my review was helpful.
LK

[Jet]

Very very helpful indeed, I would like to find out myself how long I can talk on one single charge using a BT headset.

[she a g e e]

Go to settings:

GPS off: under security&location.
Wifi off: under wireless controls
3G off: wireless controls>mobile networks>use only 2g networks.

Hope that helps .

[LordKurgan]

Go to settings:

GPS off: under security&location.
Wifi off: under wireless controls
3G off: wireless controls>mobile networks>use only 2g networks.

Hope that helps .

What I was talking about is when the phone is idle it doesn't need 3G active. Having it on all the time eats the battery. If I open the web browser, youtube, etc it turns on 3G. If I open google maps and pick "My location" It should ask me if I want to use GPS. Right now you have to dig through the menu and enable or disable these things.

[Technickal]

wow, doesnt look good

[she a g e e]

Lol, oh ok nvm then.

[Bratag]

Seriously Tech. Just go away. Why are you here - every single post you make is negative. Go buy and iPhone and you can sit in a circle with other iPhone people and touch each other.

Onto the review. The reason it keeps 3d on is that there are still processes running while the phone is idle - you are checking email, updating weather perhaps etc. Anything to do with the network is going to use 3d if you have it turned on. Personally I am only going to turn on my 3g when I want fast browsing etc. I have to say edge is plenty fast enough for me just casually browsing/checking email.

Turning GPS on in an app is dangerous - it is possible within the SDK though. If you turn GPS on in an app you take the risk of the app being backgrounded but gps being left on. Making it a manual choice eliminates that. I can see your point though.

Big IMAP email boxes were always a nightmare for my windows mobile as well. Even flexmail couldnt handle them. I suspect this may be a buffer issue and should be able to be fixed.

Wierd about the gmail push. For me I get gmail email almost immediately.

[djwaz]

Seriously Tech. Just go away. Why are you here - every single post you make is negative. Go buy and iPhone and you can sit in a circle with other iPhone people and touch each other.

Lol I' sorry that is funny

[LordKurgan]

Seriously Tech. Just go away. Why are you here - every single post you make is negative. Go buy and iPhone and you can sit in a circle with other iPhone people and touch each other.

Onto the review. The reason it keeps 3d on is that there are still processes running while the phone is idle - you are checking email, updating weather perhaps etc. Anything to do with the network is going to use 3d if you have it turned on. Personally I am only going to turn on my 3g when I want fast browsing etc. I have to say edge is plenty fast enough for me just casually browsing/checking email.

Turning GPS on in an app is dangerous - it is possible within the SDK though. If you turn GPS on in an app you take the risk of the app being backgrounded but gps being left on. Making it a manual choice eliminates that. I can see your point though.

Big IMAP email boxes were always a nightmare for my windows mobile as well. Even flexmail couldnt handle them. I suspect this may be a buffer issue and should be able to be fixed.

Wierd about the gmail push. For me I get gmail email almost immediately.

I think you got me all wrong here. I like the phone matter a fact I like it a lot. As for negative stuff we already all know about the great things the phone offers. Like an open platform pretty good hardware all the things the phone has done right that Apple hasn't. All these things that I listed are things once tweaked that will make a great phone even better.

As for your "iPhone circle" I don't and won't even buy an apple product!! I don't like Apple at all. My 2 mp3 players are made by archos and iriver. matter a fact I think comparing this phone to the iPhone is dumb. I only bring up the iPhone once and thats when I'm talking about the size. The iPhone is a PMP with a phone inside. The G1 is anything you want it to be.

I know about apps using 3G in the background like I said if the phone is not doing anything, being "idle" it would be nice if the phone could turn it on and off when needed. By the way web browsing works pretty good on EDGE I tested it. Depending on what your doing like checking weather you shouldn't need 3G.

I also said when talking about turning on and off GPS that the phone should ask you when your in a app that would like to access it. Meaning you have to click turn on GPS. So its still manual. I wouldn't want an app just turning GPS on and off on its own that would be dumb.

IMAP issue is just a small bug.

Like I said everything I said that was negitive can be fixed and will be with a little time.

[Technickal]

Seriously Tech. Just go away. Why are you here - every single post you make is negative. Go buy and iPhone and you can sit in a circle with other iPhone people and touch each other.

Hey if you like men keep that to yourself