HTC in cooperation with Google has created a new cell phone with an Android operating system. The mobile phone is called "T-Mobile G1" and is characterized by a special design, with a large screen that can be pushed to the side to reveal a full 5 row qwerty keyboard.
The mobile phone is said to become a major competitor to Apple's IPhone. The mobile phone is build around an open source operating system, just like the iPhone, so both developers and the phone manufacturers can bring the users content and applications support. In practice this means that everyone can build applications for this mobile phone for anyone to buy or just download for free over the Internet. Using the built-in keyboard, it has become easy to navigate around on the phone, on the net and doing tasks like writing e-mails or other documents.
The G1 comes with:
- 528MHz processor
- WLAN function
- 3.2 inch touchscreen
- Full 5 row QWERTY keyboard
- 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus
- Full HTML browser
- Google Talk which is an chat program
- GPS navigation capability with Google Maps
- Street View which means that you can watch maps in real pictures from where you are and in street view
- Gmail
- YouTube
And many other Google features.
The mobile phone weights 158 grams, which also include the battery. The G1 also has a built-in microphone and speaker and supports many audio and video formats like Mp3, AAC, ACC + and Mp4
The G1 has a search box on the desktop which is meant to search both the phone and the Internet. To reach the search box you just have to slide to the right with your fingertip and the desktop slides to a screen with a search box only. The search box also has some cool features. For instance it tries to guess what you want to search for by listing the most common searches on the Internet, while you are typing.
One of the features that makes the G1 stand out from the iPhone is the background picture.
On an iPhone, you can not put background pictures on your desktop, while on a G1 phone you just get a panoramic picture when "sliding" around on the desktop.
The G1 looks pretty much the same as the previous T-Mobile Sidekick series.
I do not like the design very much. I did expect a little more with Google and HTC working together, but I do also think that the software works really good and has some very nice functions. The G1 is very simple to use and you can take some shortcuts and directly add them to your desktop.
The absolute greatest advantage is the ability to accept open source programs, and I predicts this concept will be the future.