I mentioned a few posts back about the impending arrival of my new T-Mobile G1. I put off reviewing it because I wanted to take pictures. But then I couldn’t find my camera’s USB cord. This was compounded by the fact that I took about two pictures when I opened the box and got so engulfed in playing with it (read: I’m a geek) that I stopped right about there.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with cell phone news, the G1 is the first phone to be shipped with Android, Google’s new foray into the cell phone software industry. After playing with it for a week, I think I can sit back and write a pretty balanced review of the product. I won’t go into all of the hardware (that’s over here), but let me say that as a physical device, it’s sleek.

When I first turned it on, setup was a breeze. Power up, put in your Google Account information, and you’re instantly integrated with all the Google services on a mobile platform. The GMail application is push-based. I have to say that once you’ve had push-based e-mail, you’ll never want to go back to SMTP or POP3 on a phone again. As an application, it’s got a nice minimalist design, but all the features are there (archive!). The fact that it shows the conversation view and labels was a major plus. The one drawback, if any, is that there seems to be no way to (easily) switch between different Gmail accounts. You could set one up as POP3/IMAP with the default mail client (which works just fine, and is actually pretty well-featured for a phone e-mail app), but it’s not as nice as the push-based system.

All your normal features like texting, pictures, audio/video, etc. are there, and work just fine. Par for the course with any smartphone these days. The texting is conversation-based, which is nice (and a definite step-up from my flip phone). One thing that actually surprised me was how nice the contacts menu is handled. Each contact can have (seemingly) infinite phone numbers, addresses, e-mails, and god knows what else. The one place this stood out was its integration. From my contacts I can do anything with an individual contact that my phone allows. The one-touch-map-where-they-live button is great.

Google Maps. Standard application on most smartphones these days, and the G1 handles it well. Nothing super-duper amazing with this–except for streetview, with a built-in compass mode where you can turn and it turns with you. One drawback I will say is the zooming. Both here and in the browser (we’ll get there in a moment) use a rather lackluster zoom. Since it’s a single-touch screen unlike the iPhone’s multi-touch, you can’t do the click-and-drag-to-zoom thing that iPhone users love. The zooming isn’t bad, exactly, I just expected something a bit better. The GPS (while a battery drain) is dead-on, down to within a few feet of accuracy.

iPhone beware, you no longer are the sole competition in the “best browser on a phone” race. Safari rocks, and the fact that iPhone users have it has made me jealous for some time. Given that Palm royally sucks in this arena (I’m looking at you Blazer and other crappy handhelds), the bar isn’t set terribly high. Enter Android with it’s WebKit-based browser (but not officially Chrome?). They have truly delivered in this area, and I’m finding myself using “Browser” constantly all day long. It renders sites exactly how they usually would be (we’re talking full CSS and Javascript here), and I’ve yet to hit problems. Flash support is needed however; apparently Android supports this but it was taken out of the T-Mobile builds.

Now for some flaws. The default IM application is horrible. It’s slow, disconnects all the time, and does crazy things on occassion–a notable case being I IM’d my brother, he replied, and the replies looked like they came from me. Meebo tried to deliver, but their application suffers from the same disconnect-at-will issues, so it was uninstalled as well. I’ve found a few other applications to be hit-or-miss (the Terminal emulator to use the OS directly seems useless, you’re locked out of everything, and the root hack seems wildly insecure). I have a feeling the applications will improve with time, as more enter the market. It’s part of that early-adopters process. There’s certainly some bugs to be worked out, but those will resolve in time. No product is perfect on day one.

Personally, I think when the iPhone came out it set a standard of what a smartphone should be nowadays. I can’t in good faith call the G1 an iPhone-killer, it won’t do that. However, I do believe that T-Mobile with HTC and Google have brought a phone to the table that is at least a serious competitor. The G1 isn’t the iPhone, and it’s obviously not trying to be. It is, however, trying to present a solid mobile platform (Android isn’t stopping at the G1) that accomplishes the same tasks in a different way. I think it does that very well.

[Oh, and as a minor sidenote: MediaWiki renders perfectly in the browser, which is awesome]