Editors' Rating
| Design |  |
6.0 |
| Features |  |
8.0 |
| Performance |  |
7.0 |
Published: 21 Oct 2008
It's been a little more than a year since Google Android was announced and rumours of a device called the HTC Dream started to leak onto the web. The Dream has probably stirred up as much anticipation and hype as the Apple iPhone — not only because it's the first smartphone to run Google's mobile platform, but also because of its potential to overtake Apple's product.
The T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream, will be available through T-Mobile on 30 October in black or white and will be offered on two tariffs. The Combi tariff offers you a free T-Mobile G1 with 800 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited mobile Internet browsing for a total of £40 a month. On the Flext tariff you get a free T-Mobile G1 with web'n'walk for just £40 per month including unlimited mobile internet browsing and up to 1,250 minutes or up to 2,500 texts or any mix of the two.
Design
The T-Mobile G1 is manufactured by HTC and has a similar look and feel to the company's other Pocket PC smartphones, such as the HTC TyTN II and the HTC Touch Pro. Measuring 118mm tall by 56mm wide by 17mm deep and weighing 158g, the G1 is definitely not the sleekest device, and we certainly wouldn't call it sexy. Instead, the words 'interesting' and 'weird' come to mind. This is mostly because the bottom section of the phone juts out at a slight angle. Presumably, it's to get the phone's speaker closer to your mouth, which isn't a bad thing; unfortunately, it also affects the ergonomics of the keyboard, which we'll touch on later. In a battle of pure looks, Apple's iPhone would win hands down.
In a battle based on looks, we'd have to give it to the Apple iPhone.
That said, the G1 has solid construction and features a soft-touch finish on the back that provides a nice rubberlike texture, making it easy to grip the phone and comfortable to hold. Also, there's a good reason for G1's larger size: a full QWERTY keyboard. There are a number of users who are reluctant to switch to a full touch-screen smartphone because of the lack of a tactile keyboard, so the G1 is certainly an attractive option for such customers.
To access the keyboard, just push the screen to the right. The sliding mechanism is fairly interesting in that it's not a straight up-and-down motion; the screen actually swings out slightly to the left before snapping into place. The sliding motion is smooth, but after a few days of use we started to notice a creaking sound whenever we nudged the screen — not good.
The T-Mobile G1 has the advantage of a full QWERTY keyboard. Although it's spacious, the bottom portion of the phone makes it awkward to type.
The keyboard itself is a reminiscent of the T-Mobile Sidekick, as many observers pointed out during our review period. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since we like the Sidekick's keyboard. The buttons are a bit small, but overall the keyboard feels roomy and there's enough spacing between the keys not to cause problems. If anything, we wish the buttons were raised a bit more, as they're set flush with the phone's surface. The bigger issue is that the bottom section of the G1 makes it awkward to hold the phone when typing messages, which definitely affects the speed and accuracy of typing.
When you slide open the phone, the screen orientation automatically switches from portrait to landscape mode. That said, while equipped with an accelerometer, the screen doesn't change when you physically rotate the phone in its closed state. According to T-Mobile, during testing, people preferred that the screen only change when using the keyboard, which may be so, but we see the benefit of having automatic screen rotation in some instances, such as viewing pictures. This is not to say that this functionality won't be added in the future, and in the future, there will be applications where orientation will rotate with the phone's position, even when the screen is down.
The actual display measures 3.2in. diagonally and has a 320-by-480-pixel resolution. It's vibrant and sharp, and like the iPhone and RIM BlackBerry Storm, the touch-screen is capacitive, so it will only respond to the touch of your finger and not your fingernail or other objects like a stylus. The G1 provides haptic feedback, but only for certain actions and not with every touch. First, you'll feel a slight vibration when performing a long press on an icon. Overall, we thought this was fine, but there were times when the G1 didn't register our actions, so some kind of confirmation would have been nice.
To access various functions within an application, you can perform another long press and a window will pop up with your options. It's contextual, so the menu items will always be relevant to the program you are in. You can swiftly navigate through lists with a quick flick, or you can drag your finger for a slower, more precise look. In addition, you can pan and move web pages and other documents by holding and then moving your finger around the screen. Unlike the iPhone, however, the G1's touch screen isn't multi-touch, so you can't zoom in and out of pages by pinching your fingers apart. We did miss this feature, since it makes viewing web pages and pictures easy, but it's not strictly necessary.
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