t-mobile G2 review – first impressions

 

G2 has arrived

 

The good:

– super fast delivery from t-mobile. I ordered it on the 4th and was able to select it for a plan upgrade. It arrived on the evening of the 5th. This time t-mobile got the launch process right, perfect user experience.

– compared to the G1 its very fast – feels like the Nexus One, but with a physical keyboard.

– android 2.2 with gmail supporting more than one google account is a plus, but a nicer mail app comparable to what apple does could be better…

– H instead of 3G is noticably faster. According to speedtest.net I get about 2Mbps download, and 1Mbps upload on average. That is more than my $40/month AT&T DSL… mhm… maybe I’ll cancel AT&T’s DSL, add a line to keep using my G1 as a phone and leave the G2 at home as an internet hotspot? But I’d miss the speed on the road then…

– did I already say it was fast? 🙂 So not just from a network standpoint, but also from a cpu standpoint, working with the web browser, firing up navigation etc does no longer invoke a half a minute wait as on the G1…

– picture quality is actually better than I first thought! See photo below…

The bad:

– keyboard does not have number row and stuff in non-qwerty places, and so it is a lot more cumbersome to type on that the G1 that had a real qwerty keyboard.

– While it is real cool that the gallery on the phone now includes photos from picasa and other sources (I really like that actually) it also appears to be much slower to bring up a picture in full resolution than expected?

The ugly:

– in-call volume is very low. I was able to make phone calls directly from the handset with the G1 that I cannot make anymore with the G2, i.e. from a bus or car… with the speaker it is fine.

I’ll post more as I use it more 🙂

I want a hardware refresh of the G1 (original google android phone)

I see all those new android phones come out with faster hardware and better camera, but no real keyboard and other deficiencies…

After having lived with the shortcomings of the G1 and comparing to that for a while, I feel that I really just want a hardware-refresh of the existing G1 phone and not the new droid nor the N1.

I want to have the faster cpu, more RAM, better camera (led flash, light sensitivity) and faster USB read speed (12MB/s instead of 5MB/s) of the N1 but I do not want to give up the hardware keyboard of the G1, the hardware buttons of the G1 (accept call/home/back/hangup). I actually love the slide-out keyboard design, it allows me to switch to real typing mode real fast.

The droid hardware keyboard is a joke, it is worse than the on-screen keyboard in terms of accuracy.

I love htc’s special usb cable that allows me to connect any headphone as well as my car stereo to it, with a microphone on the connector plus a button that allows me to skip mp3 songs and accept calls mostly hands-free while driving.

The G1 is a pretty good smartphone, just the cpu and ram deficiency makes it painfully slow.

I even like the form-factor, fits well in my pocket.

Can I just get a hardware refresh instead of a new broken design please?

Michael

Review Nexus One (N1) comparison to G1 android phone

What I like better on Nexus One (N1) compared to my G1

+ faster cpu and more RAM make web browser and switching between apps much more responsive. However, once you do your day to day things you will notice that some of the apps depend on remote resources and those will be as slow as the network, i.e. Where, so more CPU+RAM is NOT a cure-all for performance. It is now easier to open lots (15+) of web pages in the browser and leave them open in the background.

+ reading files (i.e. importing images from the phone) from SD now is 12MB/s instead of 5MB/s. Writing is the same 5MB/s.

+ battery life twice as long (not measured)

+ flash on camera actually works, it is finally possible to take pictures while clubbing. However whitebalance is expecting flash, so if you take without flash then the colors look off. As usual having more megapixel does not improve the picture quality which depends largely on other factors (light sensitiveness, sharpness, color truthfulnes)

+ android 2 features like facebook / contacts integration is nice

+ can take backside off and battery-out much easier than on G1

+ normal audiojack, but thats not only a plus, see below

What I don’t like on Nexus One (N1) compared to my G1

– some apps are not ready for it, i.e. commodore 64 emulators who would direclty benefit from faster cpu only use a small portion of the screen as their framebuffer size is hardcoded. (tested two of them). Moxier Mail (enterprise quality exchange email) just force-closes while authenticating and is not useable.

– no hardware keyboard. While the onscreen keyboard does work somewhat nice it still is a major drawback when trying to type larger amounts of text or while doing other things… it just consumes more percent of your attention to correctly enter text.

– voice dictation not a real substitute yet, integration into keyboard only available in some apps? Sometimes loses connection to servers while waiting to upload data for interpretation and aborts, does not work offline. Quality varies, between garbage and suprising accuracy.

– no hardware keys for phone pickup/hangup. You now actually have to navigate through the touchscreen keyboard to hangup a call when you navigated to say the contacts to look up or take down a new phonenumber.

– oversaturated colors

– new screen technology (better viewing angles) does not have as natural colors?

When comparing photos displayed on g1 and on n1 then the g1 ones look a bit desaturated and the ones on the n1 looks overly saturated in a bad way. Maybe I have a bad engineering sample, but if it is representative then I am less excited about it then everybody else.

– connector for charging now no longer standard micro USB, means you forget the special cable and you are out, but at least when you forget your special usb2audio cable you can now use it without the in-line microphone and accept/hangup/skipsong button from HTC.

Overall I am less excited than I thought I would be and will probably hang on to my G1 until I get something drastically better.