T-Mobile G1 - Second Impressions…
I’ve had my T-Mobile G1 now for a whole 2.5 days and so it’s time to write a little more about it. Firstly I want to come back to a couple of things I wrote in my last post.
GPS - GPSÂ functions perfectly. I discovered the reason for location being a little off and that’s only when you are either indoors, or when the GPS is turned off. Under ‘Security & Location’ in the ‘Settings’ menu there are options for ‘Use Wireless Networks’ and ‘Enable GPS Satellites’. By default these are both turned on. What that means is that if you are inside somewhere and decide to use the Maps application and hit the ‘My Location’ option then the phone will end up using the WiFi method for locating you. That means triangulation from signals and other methods. Consequently your location will be reported slightly wrongly. However if you are outside or have a good signal from somewhere inside then GPS will work fine. I have found that even sometimes inside buildings I can get a GPS lock - but not always. So this clears up any confusion over the GPS functionality written about by a few reviewers.
Battery - This is one area that certainly is very different from my Blackberry experience. Battery life lasts about a day depending on what you do. So be prepared. It is possible if you do a lot of browsing, GPS use, or game playing that your battery may not last the day. Be advised! Just a little lifestyle adjustment to make. The battery does recharge very quickly however and it can also be recharged from your PC by just plugging in the mini-USB cable.
Browser - Overall I’m very pleased with the browser. It is responsive, displays everything just as it should and generally is a delight to use. SO much better than my Blackberry! A couple of things to note though are that a) the browser always opens to your last loaded page and not a ‘home’ page. This can be a little annoying from time to time; and b) page navigation is a little tricky at times when you’re in ‘zoom out’ mode and trying to find exactly the part of the web page you are looking for. The reason for this is that you have to keep your finger on the screen as you move around the page but sometimes it’s hard to see where you are cos your finger’s in the way, and so you let go and lo and behold you get the part of the page where your finger was! Just another little usage thing to get used to.
Keyboard - I love the fact that it’s a real keyboard and there are dedicated keys for ‘.’ and ‘@’, which is really useful in email address typing. On the downside I find that sometimes I cannot see the ‘extended’ keys when the backlighting is on in a dark room. I have to guess a little as to which key they belong to. I think this is primarily because they’re red. As I said, it’s fine in normal light, just a little difficult in dark light. The main keys of course are fine and easy to read in any light. Some reviewers have said they don’t like the feel of the keyboard or that the ‘nub’ of the phone gets in the way. I haven’t found this to be true at all. The phone works well for my typing methods so I guess that’s a personal thing, not a genuine problem.
Email Syncing - First of all everything Google is fine - 100%. Let’s get that out of the way. However my Yahoo! syncing is not so perfect. I find that for some reason my connection to Yahoo! email doesn’t work all of the time and I get ‘connection error’ messages from time to time. I haven’t managed to find a pattern here, although I think it may only be happening when I am connected to data services via a WiFi network and not when it’s 3G. I’ll have to investigate more on that. Like I said, it’s mostly fine, just a little annoying from time to time. But the biggest disappointment for me has to be that I have no access to my corporate email. I have tried to set it up in many different ways but all to no avail. Next week at the office I will try and talk to the IT Help Desk and see if there’s anything I can do to make it work. But for now - no go.
Android Marketplace - So far I’ve only tried a few of the applications but my general experience has been good. My favorite app is ‘Ringdroid’, an application that allows you to make ringtones from snippets of any song you have in your library. Now that is brilliant! ‘Pacman’ is also pretty addictive of course and I’ve tried out ‘ShopSavvy’ the bar code reader program. This program works well at reading barcodes, just don’t expect it to tell you where to buy cheap groceries as it’s aimed at ‘luxury’ items like TVs, big software, etc. But it does what it does very well.
Other Comments - Now I’ve had the phone for a couple of days it’s starting to feel more natural for everything. I have to say it’s a big usability change from the Blackberry. Not unpleasant, just a big change. I’ve managed to set up my ringtones how I like them - something that is not explained in the user manual by the way - and that’s made a big difference. On the topic of the user manual, it’s pretty basic. It covers all the applications of the phone, but you’ll have to figure out the ‘options’ yourself.
So, that’s about it for today. I’ll write some more thoughts later in the week.
