Review: HTC G1 Android Phone

It's finally here. The Gphone, the Google Phone -- otherwise known as the T-Mobile G1 with Google. It is the first device running the new mobile operating system from Google, called Android. This InformationWeek report takes in-depth look at both the hardware and the software.

The build-up lasted nearly a year. Google first announced its intent to launch a new mobile operating platform in November 2007. Since then, the mobile industry and geeks the world over have been hungrily awaiting its arrival. Google, along with wireless network operator T-Mobile USA and handset manufacturer High Tech Computer (HTC), has offered up the first piece of hardware with Android as the backbone. Was it worth the wait? Can Android challenge the incumbents? Let's break it down bit by bit.

First Impressions

If you're looking to be wowed by the G1, better prepare for disappointment. The G1, manufactured by Taiwan-based HTC, is a rather blunt, blocky device that fails to inspire. It's heavy and doesn't have the attractive qualities that HTC has imbued some of its other recent smartphones. Compared to other devices that are of similar size, it is weightier and bulkier. Not egregiously so, but enough that you notice.

The review unit I had was brown. Brown is not the most flattering color for any electronics device. The G1 also comes in white and black (like another device you may have heard about, called the iPhone).

Most of the G1's controls are easy enough to use. There are five buttons at the bottom of the phone for interacting with the menus and other functions. All these buttons are fine. The trackball -- similar in feel to the BlackBerry Pearl or Curve -- works well for zooming around the screen quickly if you're too lazy to stretch your thumb up to touch the display. There are several hatches covering the microSD and miniUSB ports. While the miniUSB port on the bottom is easy enough to peel back, the microSD port is hidden craftily in the G1's side.

Touchscreen And Keboard

The two biggest parts of the G1 that you'll be interacting with are the touch screen and the full QWERTY keyboard. The touch screen is made from touch capacitance technology, similar to the Apple iPhone. Touch capacitive screens are very responsive. The G1 was no different in this regard. It responds well to user input and doesn't require multiple touches to get it to work. The screen itself is fantastic. It is very bright, sharp, and colorful. Images, Web pages, icons, and graphics look incredible.

If you read other reviews about the G1, you'll see both praise and criticism of the physical keyboard. I didn't like it. The brown version of the G1 uses poor color choices for the keys that make them very hard to tell apart. Even when the keyboard's backlighting is on, it is difficult to see which keys you're pressing. This makes it somewhat difficult to type.

Also, the G1 has a large chin at the bottom (where the menu keys and trackball are). You have to reach your right hand around this chin to reach the keyboard. I found it to be awkward and it caused some strain in my hand after using it for a while. Others have reported that the keyboard feels great. The keys themselves feel OK, but any keyboard takes some time to adjust to.

One thing to keep in mind: Since there is no software keyboard at all, you're going to be opening and closing the G1 a lot to type messages or any sort of text.

In all, the G1 is not a bad piece of hardware, but it is not the best I've used, either. The User Experience

The Android graphical user interface is a breeze to use. When you first boot the phone you have to sign up with Google. A Google/Gmail account is required, there's no skirting that issue. Once you enter your username and password, the phone sets itself up and automatically configures your Gmail account and populates your contacts list. Nice.

The home screen has a clock and several menu options for accessing the phone's main applications. Swiping up from the bottom of the touch screen opens the full menu. The full menu holds about 20 different applications. This is as far as you have to dig to get to most of the G1's features. Believe me when I say this is nice. Other mobile platforms (ahem, Windows Mobile, S60) make you drill through layers and layers of menus to reach certain tasks or settings. You'll do no such digging with Android.

The home screen of Android can be fully customized by the end user. Feel free to drag and drop any application, folder, or shortcut to the phonetop and place it wherever you wish. There are three panels to the home screen; simply swipe left or right to access more real estate for your applications. There is a built-in Google search bar on one of the pages. This makes it very easy to fire off a quick search right from the phonetop without opening the browser.

Incoming messages and other alerts are almost always accessible via a notifier that rests at the top of the screen. Swiping the notification bar down opens it up and you can see a full list of unread messages, missed calls, etc. This notifier is available from most applications on the G1.

Android is so simple that pretty much anyone can figure it out quickly.

Features... Or Lack Thereof

The G1 has many features that you come to expect on most handsets these days, especially devices which claim to call themselves smartphones. A camera is on board, as is a music player, browser, messaging clients, and so on.

The camera is a bit maddening to use. It has an autofocus lens, but focusing takes forever. The G1 does not match the speed of many other cameraphones that have autofocus. While the resulting images are a bit sharper than a fixed-focus camera would produce, the fact that it takes so long to take the pictures means you're likely going to miss that Kodak moment. You can, however, bypass the autofocus if you wish. The time savings you get are minimal.

The camera software doesn't allow you to do much. It is a bare-bones affair. No fancy shooting modes or effects are on board. The G1 also doesn't record video, which is a major detractor against it. In fact, the G1 doesn't even have video-playing software at all. You have to go to the Android Market to download a video player. Thankfully the software is free.

The music player is capable, but HTC goofed by failing to include a 3.5-mm headset jack on the device. If you want to listen to music, you can use the included stereo headphones that attach via the G1's USB port or you can buy an adapter and use your own headphones. The included headphones are not of the best quality. Personally, if I am going to carry around a device as large and heavy as the G1, I want it to be fully converged and cover all the bases. Music playback is one base not handled so well. Email And Messaging

The G1 accepts push e-mail from Gmail natively. It will also sync with your POP3 and IMAP accounts. There is no support for Exchange, at least from T-Mobile or Google. At the time of this writing, a developer had created a temporary stop-gap that allows people to retrieve work e-mail, but it is not full Exchange. I would expect this to change eventually.

The on-board Gmail client is decent. It is definitely better than the iPhone's e-mail client, but it has a few quirks. For instance, you can star or archive e-mails easily, but you have to scroll to the bottom of an e-mail to reply to or forward it. This can be frustrating if the e-mail happens to be really long.

The G1 does a good job at making SMS and MMS messages easy to compose, but it is here that the lack of a software keyboard starts to grate. There's no such thing as one-handed messaging with the G1. Thankfully, SMS conversations are threaded, so you can see all the messages to/from a given contact in one long string.The browser is one of the G1's best features. It is not Chrome, Google's desktop browser, but it is closely related. Based on Webkit, it uses the same engine that the iPhone's Safari browser and the Nokia S60 browser use. This means you get a rich browsing experience. Web sites truly do look great on the G1's display. You can use your finger to pan around pages and zoom in and out.

I tested the G1 in areas covered by T-Mobile's 3G network. I had mixed results. Some days the phone browsed the mobile Web at blazing fast speeds, and other times it was downright pokey. Most users report fast browsing speeds.

Speed

Wi-Fi comes in the 802.11b/g flavors, but no 802.11n. Bluetooth 2.0+EDR is also on board, but no support for stereo Bluetooth. The built-in GPS unit was very accurate. I was able to pinpoint my location to within about 10 feet. The G1's time to first fix was slightly shorter than that of other phones I've tested recently. This means it locks onto a satellite quicker and locates your position on the map faster.

Applications

The Android Market was up and running while I tested the G1. It had about 50 apps available for download. They ran the gamut of productivity, media, and networking applications. They came complete with user reviews, ratings, and synopses of what each application does. Downloading them was a snap over Wi-Fi, and not too painful via 3G, either. If EDGE is the only available connection, the download process is a little harder to sit through. The experience is very similar to that of the iPhone and the Apps Store from Apple. Digging Deeper

While some look at the G1's arrival as a potential iPhone killer, the real story lies within the Android platform and its impact on the feature-phone market. The G1 has left many mobile device industry followers, particularly those in the developer community, marveling at the seemingly endless opportunities for Web-based services and applications. Mass-market devices are evolving to bring more advanced, PC-like features to millions of mobile phone users, and software is playing a large part in enabling them.

"No longer reserved for high-end smartphones, the mobile Web will be coming to life for more everyday users through this open source innovation," according to Javier Villamizar, president of high-growth markets at Brightstar.

Android is pretty much all about enabling applications and services through the mobile Internet, and to that end, it looks like an able platform. As an open source project, anyone can contribute to Android and influence its direction. It means that anyone can download, build, and run the code needed to create a complete mobile device. With an open source platform, developers, OEMs, carriers, and code contributors have the opportunity to build faster, cheaper, and more innovative devices and services.

"Open source allows everyone and anyone equal access to the ideas and innovation that can make good products great," said Andy Rubin, Google's senior director of mobile platforms. "An open sourced mobile platform that's constantly being improved upon by the community and is available for everyone to use speeds innovation, is an engine of economic opportunity, and provides a better mobile experience for users."

In order for this new phone to truly compete with the iPhone and Blackberry devices, it must be app-rich. With a rush to develop for the G1 phone over the open Android platform, competition in the mobile application space will increase tremendously, and will force developers to build higher-quality mobile apps in order to stand out from the rest of the pack. Without the rich applications that the iPhone has gained popularity for, convincing consumers that the Android phone is better than the iPhone will be a difficult task.

But Google is already partially there. It has given away the source code and publicly said that it won't be implementing any sort of draconian review process for developers to create applications for Android. Android developers will see 70% of any and all revenue from their apps go straight into their pockets. That's a big enticement. The remaining 30% will go to the network operators. In this case, that means T-Mobile USA. Google is not going to keep any money generated by the Android Market.

Final Thoughts

In its present form, Android and the G1 feel more like a feature phone than a smartphone. That is sure to change over time as more businesses develop applications for the Android platform and as the platform itself matures. Right now, it is not an enterprise-worthy device. It lacks the necessary support for Exchange and the security that most businesses would need.

While the G1 is an obvious first attempt to bring a fledgling platform to market, there is lots of room for Android to grow. And grow it shall.