September 23, 2008

Google Picks Big Android Fight With T-Mobile G1 Phone: Live Analysis

(REMEMBR REMOVABLE FLASH MEMORY !)

UPDATE—Hands-on Review: T-Mobile won't have long-term loaners of the HTC G1 for us to test for a few weeks, but here at the G1 launch event, there were several working models to play with. We spent around 20 minutes with the device and at the very least can give it PM's first "noble effort" award. In the hand, the G1 isn't as much of a brick as we had feared from advance pictures, but it still feels bulky next to the iPhone—its most obvious competitor. See what just happened—we started writing a review in an attempt to judge the G1 on its own merits, and the iPhone snuck right into the conversation. It's no use. The comparison is unavoidable, and so from here on out you're going to be hearing a lot of comparisons to Apple's now iconic device.

First, the screen: The G1's 3.2-in. touchscreen is similar to the iPhone's, but it lacks the iPhone's multitouch functions such as pinch zoom on photos and maps. Nevertheless, the screen is very responsive and allows for grabbing, dragging and swipe scrolling. One of Android's coolest features is its windowshades—menus that can be dragged down from both the top and bottom of the screen. The top windowshade shows running apps and processes, the bottom windowshade slides up to reveal your applications on the main menu. The multitasking makes the Android experience very computer-like, but it makes us wonder if Android will be subject to the sort of memory-overload crashes that are common to Windows Mobile.

As we already mentioned the G1 is a bit bulky. What do you get for the extra bulk? First off, you get a removable battery and removable memory (the G1 comes with a 1 GB micro-SD card, which can be replaced with larger capacity cards). You also get a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard that instantly changes the screen to landscape mode. The keyboard is comfortable and spacious and far easier to type on than the iPhone's onscreen keyboard. This makes the G1 a formidable messaging and e-mail device. The phone comes preloaded with GMail and Googletalk for messaging, but there is also a native e-mail program that can work with most Web-based e-mail clients. The presence of Googletalk raises the tantalizing prospect of VoIP functionality, and representatives from Google and T-Mobile didn't rule out the possibility of applications that will let users talk over Wi-Fi or a 3G web connection.

We also tried out a few of the embedded apps. The music player was a bit disappointing, lacking the interface elegance of the iPhone's momentum-based scrolling animations, but the direct link to Amazon.com's MP3 download service is promising, as it should allow users to buy from the device, and then share DRM-free MP3s easily with other devices.

The mapping application is dynamic and brilliant, as you'd expect from Google. It includes StreetView, traffic data and routing functionality. And pretty much every other application on the G1 has some interaction with Google Maps on the phone—pinpointing any address and offering location-based services.

To demonstrate just how elegant this interaction could be, one of the third-party apps available at launch, ShopSavvy, was showing off its software on the phone. It allows you to use the G1's 3 megapixel onboard camera to scan the bar code on a product, then gives you a price comparison with online sellers. If you enable the location-based functionality, it will even use the map to show nearby shops that are selling what you've scanned and give you pricing info for each retailer. So you could find what you want in one shop, then instantly comparison shop at nearby stores without taking a single step.

Ultimately, the power of Android will lie in the imagination of third-party developers. Every time we asked Google representatives about functionality that wasn't in the G1, they said "That sounds like a fantastic opportunity for an outside programmer." That presents a bit of a chicken and egg problem. We're not sure developers are going to be very excited about programming for the Android platform until a lot of phones are in customers' hands, but it's also not clear that customers will buy into the platform until there is a more robust suite of applications.

And so T-Mobile and the HTC G1 get to be the guinea pigs for Google's experiment in mobile operating systems. As we said, it's a noble first effort. And any Android phone will become more useful as the OS itself grows. The big question is: Will it grow explosively, like the iPhone, or slowly and organically? Google has the time and money to wait and see. It's OS isn't tied down to the G1's hardware, so if this phone doesn't attract users the way the iPhone has, the company can team with another manufacturer to create the next "next iPhone." —Glenn Derene