Review: T-Mobile HTC G1 – The Google Phone – Part 1
Filed Under (Cellphones, HTC, Smartphones) by admin on 29-03-2009 >> 67 views
Tagged Under : Cellphones, HTC, T-Mobile
T-Mobile G-1. Nearly all the hype, all the excitement of the iPhone minus multi-touch (but with copy-paste, thankyouverymuch) and presented here in all its glory.
We at MobileWhack got hold of the HTC/Google G-1 mobile phone a couple of weeks ago thanks to the guys over at PureMobile. I have been playing with it during these few days and, while it falls a tad short of the iPhone, it’s an impressive first version that I suspect was intended more for the geeks out there than ordinary folks. After all, the geeks are the ones that wouldn’t mind carrying a bricky 5.6 oz phone as long as they get to show it off – you know what I mean.
I am very happy with the display: while slightly smaller than the iPhone’s, this is obviously the way of the future for phones and there’s no doubt about it.
Initial Setup
The Google phone requires a Google account before you can do anything – including activate the phone on T-Mobile. Since I wasn’t technically on their G-1 plan (which is a 3G/EDGE package with 400 messages/month), I could not, for some reason, activate the phone immediately, so I had to call in for support from T-Mobile. I didn’t realize the problem immediately and it took a couple of days before I had to give up. Once activated, you get to the main screen, which by default shows 4 icons: “Dialer”, “Contacts”, “Browser” and “Maps” – in that order. That sets the priorities just about right.
Importing contacts was simply flawless. I exported my Windows Address Book (which is where your iPhone/Nokia/BlackBerry contacts go if you don’t have Outlook or something like that on Windows) onto a file, uploaded it onto my newly created Google account and voila – within a short time all contacts were imported. As with any Google account, you get not only Gmail but a ton of other products like Calendar, Docs and so on.
