While I was more impressed by the T-Mobile G1 than I thought I’d be, the list of catches for Android and the phone are quickly piling up—some that might very well be dealbreakers. Topping the list, it’s tightly integrated with your Google account—so tightly that you can only use one Google account with the phone . If you want to switch to another account, you have to do a whole factory reset.
A Googler told us the workaround they’ve been employing is using a separate IMAP mail app for their secondary Gmail accounts, but that still screws you if you’ve got calendars on multiple Google accounts—like if you’ve got a hosted Google Apps account for your site and a personal one, you’ve gotta pick one or the other. This is a technical limitation of Android 1.0, so it should be fixed in the future, but for now, as someone with a work account and a personal one, it definitely stings.
Contacts and Syncing: As mentioned, there is no desktop syncing app. It’s all about the cloud—your Google contacts and cal are considered the masters. So if it’s all on your desktop or god forbird, MobileMe, you’ve gotta move it over to your Google account. At launch, however it’ll be able to do remote syncing, so if you make a change or download an app on your desktop, your device will automatically sync up. Still, it’ll be open for developers to fill this market, as well as the lack of Exchange support. Whether this is a plus or minus might depend on how you feel about Google being the masterkeeper of your contacts and info.
Video: There’s no video playback at all right now, except for YouTube. The expectation is that developers will create video playback apps and the requisite support. That’s one of those big holes we worried Google would leave to developers to fill. Same story for video recording. Devs can add it in, though we’ve heard the video quality will look much better after Qualcomm’s video accelerator is released.
Hardware Inadequacies: No multitouch on the G1 and there never will be, since the panel itself doesn’t support it. However, Googlers said they expected a full touchscreen device with multitouch in the future. The lack of a headphone jack, though kinda common for HTC devices, is pretty galling, especially for a consumer device. Mini-USB adapters are annoying as hell.
Miscellaneous: You’ve gotta have an SD card for any kind of music or video playback, once the latter arrives—there’s no internal storage for media playback. It’s one of two problems we ran into with Amazon’s MP3 store, the other being that you can only down tracks over-the-air with Wi-Fi. We’d like some over-3G action.
For all of the choices when it comes to navigation, the fact that you have to use the QWERTY keyboard for all text entry can be annoying, since it involves a lot of flipping the phone around to type if you’re navigating vertically. Some onscreen action would be nice, but once again, they’re leaving that to developers.
Finally, it’s locked to T-Mobile. A Googler lamented that as well since it goes against the openness of Android, but said that in the long run, that won’t matter, since there will be a ton of devices. But like everything else, in the meantime, developers can step in and release an unlock app. On the Android market, even. So Android’s strengths—and weaknesses—really are as much in developers’ hands as they are Google, hardware makers and carriers’.
Couture
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 1:14 PMThe limitation on multi-touch is Apple’s patent, not a technical issue. This was explained in numerous interviews today. There is a very good Video player already available for it (even uses the accelerometer to detect which aspect to choose.)
T-Mobile’s CTO said less than an hour after the conference that the Phone will be sold for full price ($399) unlocked after the 22nd of October, and they would not be changing their current policy of unlocking phones on request if you are a customer in good standing for at least 90 days.
Many HTC phones use the USB adapter for their headphones, adapters are very small, and cost less than $5.00 all over the web. You can use a simple mini-usb in the port for charging, etc. in the G1′s USB port. (It can accept either the “enhanced” HTC proprietary plugs or regular mini-plugs.)
The openness of the platform is why this phone is exciting – it’s not going to be an iPhone killer at launch, but then again, Google was never thought of as a Microsoft killer at launch either.
Matokira
Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 1:50 PMCouture took the words right out of my mouth, for the mostpart. I’d like to add the following, however..
The fact that you need a mircoSD card to play media is a moot argument. There, right there, right out of the box, one is already in the phone. It’s ready to play media imMEDIAtely.
The lack of a touchscreen keyboard is unfortunate, I guess, for anyone who’s owned an iPhone up to this point. Everyone who has NOT, however, will be very happy. I’m in that majority.
The downloading of music over Wi-Fi only is a bit crappy until you realize that you have unlimited HotSpot access. Then it’s pretty much a moot point. Or you can always just download it via PC and transfer it on over. I can’t really walk two blocks in my 3G-less city without finding a free Wi-Fi location anyway. And there’s a Starbucks, and hence, a T-Mobile HotSpot on every corner. So, not being able to bog down the 3G network with constant song downloads is a minor inconvenience for you, at best, and a major relief for the whole network. The fact that the G1 isn’t available in white for pre-order is more concerning to me than if I’ll be able to download music while driving down the road, or if I’ll have to wait a few minutes to reach a Wi-Fi location.