Fascinating, Ryan – i went into tmobile today to try out the g1
Nov 11th, 2008 by Jason
and i think it is completely unacceptable to have NO working floor models.
Were they even selling them? I read that they weren’t going to stock them in stores located in markets that didn’t have 3G. I don’t think our area is a T-Mobile 3G market yet, which might explain all of that.
Our T-Mobile store has working floor models of the G1, but we are in a T-Mobile 3G market… Tolovana traded her Dash in for a G1, and while it is pretty good overall, there are some things they just missed, but hopefully they will come out with updates often to fill in the holes…
I have to browse the free software everyday to keep up with what’s new. There’s a shell that runs old school stuff like Zork, and it’s called “Twisty”, another called Shazam does an amazing job of recognizing music – I heard something in HomeDepot, over the loud speaker, and tested it. It identifed the song as Dido – Hunter. And I could barely make out the words. I did think it was Dido, but I wasn’t sure. I think the odd names are an Adroid thing. At least the YouTube player is called YouTube. Most everything is cool, but the vibrate is weak. I’ve missed more meetings in the last two weeks than I have in the last year. The only thing I miss about the Dash is the vibrator. . . That just doesn’t sound right, does it?
The battery life is one day. Period. 12 hours.
It does an ok job of switching between e and g and 3g and wireless. It switches to wireless by default, if it’s available.
Don’t get the bronze. while I like the case color, but keyboard color & backling combo suck in dimish light. Dark is fine, bright daylight is fine, but inbetween, I’m blind. It does have a full row of number keys, which is really nice. I hated having to hold down keys to a count of three on the Dash to get a number for my “secure” passwords.
I guess I can say that I’d much rather have the G1 than the Dash. Except for the vibrator. . .
How do you get your Exchange calender over to your G1? Is there a tool that syncs that with your Google calendar?
The showstopper on the G1 for me is its inability to sync media with iTunes. I have a bunch of finely-tweaked Smart Playlists that keep my life in order, and I’d be very lost without them.
I love the idea of how open the G1 is though. I wonder if Android running on various hardware models of different screen dimensions will limit the fit ‘n finish of its third-party applications though. Guess we’ll see.
There’s a google app that runs on my desktop, and that syncs it to a google calendar. It works better since the updates.
Cool.
So have you done a lot of 3rd-party apps on your G1? I’m guessing finding them via the Store is a lot easier than having to hunt them down ala Windows Mobile style. Did you have a lot of 3rd-party stuff on your Dash?
I have quite a few on the G1, The bar-code reader / price checker is pretty cool, and there’s new ones to play with every day. They’re super easy to install and dump if you don’t like them. I’ve downloaded and dumped a lot of them becase some are really really beta, even though they’re in the store.
I did have a couple of things on the Dash – google maps, for instance. Somethings seems like a good idea, but in practice, they were useless – spreadsheets or PDF’s on a 1/4 VGA screen just isn’t worth it.
I’m pretty sure I had a couple games, but I can’t remember what they were anymore. I kept meaning to get bejewled, but never did.
LOL, Scotimus is a total Bejeweled addict!
I’m jealous of the bar-code reader. I’m very surprised that there isn’t an iPhone one!!! I wonder if they patented the concept or something?
Lots of stuff in the iPhone AppStore are garbage too, but they’re mostly free, so I don’t worry about it. The app reviews are usually a good indication of what you’re in for.
I don’t think it is a patent issue, as I think there are three different applications that use the camera to scan the bar code and lookup prices for Android.