G1 vs Jesus-phone

Ah, the mighty battle between T-Mobile’s G1 and Apple’s jesus-phone.

Yesterday morning (having finally made a decision between them) I took delivery of the G1. Tomorrow they’re coming to take it away again.

Now don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot to love about the G1 - but it’s all about the Android platform. The problem is the hardware: there are just too many niggles there to let me feel I’ll be able to stand 18 months of this phone.

Matters came to a head when I had to call T-Mobile’s (excellent) customer service centre… and met with the typical “press 1 for…” numeric menu.

To do this on the G1, you have to take the phone away from your ear, open the keyboard and then hit the appropriate key. Madness!!!

I think Android will win through in the end: it’s early stage, but the interface is intuitive, adaptable, amazingly flexible, powerful and very fast. But it’s a genie trapped in a cracked bottle.

The App Store (Android Market) is a delight to use - even better than the iTunes App Store - and will (I firmly believe) win out when the depth of apps swells to fill it, as it has over at Apple.

Meanwhile, as Martina King, then MD of Yahoo! UK & Ireland, once said to me: “A phone needs just one killer app: it needs to make calls.” Both the G1 and the vast range of windows mobile phones appear not to have picked up on that yet.

Tags: android, android market, app store, apple, G1, google, htc dream, iphone, iTunes, jesus phone, martina king, T-Mobile, windows mobile

I noticed a review last night of the T-Mobile G1, the first Google Android phone, in online magazine iGIZMO. I was alarmed when clicking on the ‘details’ icon (the little red “i” bottom left) to learn that the G1 is even more hefty that at first I’d thought… according to the reviewer it weighs 1.58kg. Makes my old XDA Exec look positively lean and mean.

Shurely shome mishtake?

Tags: android, G1, google, htc dream, iGIZMO