Is this the ‘droid we’re looking for?

The release of Android, Google’s mobile phone operating system, has caused a great deal of excitement among mobile developers. So what’s it like? Well, we queued up outside a T-Mobile store at 7am on a rainy weekday morning to get our hands on one of the first handsets to carry Android – the T-Mobile G1.

First impressions are very positive; it doesn’t look as big or as ugly as it looks in the pictures and videos. The HTC made phone is not as fancy or as polished as the iPhone. You’d never see this phone and feel an emotional connection to the way it looks.

The actual device is made by a company from Taiwan called HTC (High Tech Computer Corporation). The software on the G1 is called Android, developed by Google”:/tags/google.

Android is billed as an open source mobile operating system and based on the Linux kernel which integrates Google maps, mail, calendar etc onto one device that is always connected to the internet.

You can get a G1 on T-Mobile free if you sign up for a £40 per month, 18 month contract. The £40 per month contract includes unlimited data charges, which is always liberating as you can surf without worrying about the cost.

The T-Mobile G1 features resolution of 320×480 pixels, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, an accelerometer and a digital compass. If this does not mean much to you, then the HSDPA, Wi-Fi and 3G means very fast mobile web browsing. The GPS, accelerometer and digital compass mean that the G1 will be able to detect where you are, which way you are facing and how much/how fast you are moving the G1. As you’d imagine, this opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Highly usable interface

The G1 is very intuitive and allows natural finger gestures to control movement on the screen. For example, the desktop has three panels, each of which can be revealed by swiping screens out of the way.

A banner at the top of the screen shows the time, battery, connections and notifications, like text messages, all of which can be accessed by pulling the banner down. An arrow at the foot of the screen reveals installed programs when pulled up.

As you’d expect, T-Mobile G1 is fully integrated with all of Google’s other products like Google mail, calendar, contacts and documents. Helpfully, if you ever lost your G1, you’d just have to tap your username and password into your new G1 to access all of your original information thanks to a regular online synchronization feature.

It’s also fully integrated with Google maps and YouTube. The G1 will position you within a few streets of where you are when using cell tower triangulation, but it’s a lot more accurate with GPS switched on. Google maps isn’t a fully functional GPS navigation system, although it tries to be.

The application of new features

The G1 would be nothing without software designed for it, so Google has created a market place where people can add applications they’ve created, all of which use a star rating system.

As you’d expect, applications make the most of a lot of features of the phone. ShopSavvy uses the G1’s camera to scan barcodes from products. It then finds the same product for you on the internet or locally and shows you the best price for it.

Wiki Mobile has all the power of Wikipedia, but with a mobile interface. It separates the information out to make it easier to find what you need. Wikitude uses the compass, GPS and accelerometer to show you the places of interest around you. Nothing unique there – until you access a feature which uses the camera and, as you rotate, it shows you points in the distance and adds names of the places of interest and how far it is.

Could do better

The G1 isn’t perfect. The accelerometer, for example, could be used more. The iPhone uses its accelerometer to display screen items in landscape or portrait mode and so should the G1. The G1’s 3.2 megapixel camera is only a good camera in daylight, and because it doesn’t have a flash, it’s pretty bad in low light conditions. The lack of a video recording feature is also a disadvantage.

Downloaded applications and games all go into one menu. It would be ideal if these could be split up into different categories, rather than having a view of all different applications and games bundled together as one.

Then there’s the battery. It runs down pretty fast if you use all of the radios, especially the GPS. As this is meant to be a phone that does everything, Google should have thought about how much power all these functions are going to consume together.

The security feature of the phone is interesting; a square of nine dots that you make a shape with to unlock the device. Just make sure you select the setting to not display the pattern upon entering it.

Despite these nice to haves, the G1 is a fantastic device and it’s difficult to pull yourself away from the internet, especially sites like YouTube. Unlike the iPhone out of the box, the G1 can have many applications running at the same time and it doesn’t close down applications when you get a call. The G1 doesn’t look as good as the iPhone, but for many, functionality may prevail as it’s clearly been designed for users who like the idea of an ‘always on’ internet.

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Published: 01 Jul 2009

Tags: Customer insight, Mobile, Technical systems