It started when the new Twitter App was released and I found that I could not download. For various reasons, Google gives no more love to the G1.  I was almost ready to admit defeat.

My arms have been twitching, waiting for November when my two year plan rolls over and I can upgrade to a new handset. I have been eulogizing my G1 in my head, thinking about all the good times we had, wishing we could have more. I was preparing a humane burial since I did not want it to go the way the rest of my outdated tech toys: a lonely drawer, never to be heard from again.

That was, until the beautiful, talented and amazing guys (guy?) over at cyanogenmod.com literally breathed new life into my “ancient” handset by releasing a 2.1 ROM for the G1.  I am now able to take part in all the recent Android goodness that I have been drooling over.  It honestly makes it feel like I have a whole new phone because of how well it runs on the G1.

I had been hesitating to root my phone and download the other mods that Cyanogen had released.  It seemed like he was doing good work and making the phone better than ever was, even at launch.  There are now more options and different functionality, but there never was a huge pressing reason to me to go through the hassle of getting root access.  The game changer came when I received the twitter from Cyanogen’s feed, asking us if we wanted a pretty pony to install.  Finally… Eclair.

Now up front, the mod itself is in test phase, or beta if you will.  It is not perfect, but honestly it is really close to the best phone experience I have ever had on an Android handset.  I will explain the few bugs I hit later on.

If you have been leery of the process of modding your Android phone, it is actually a pretty easy process. There are well laid out instructions on the Cyanogen site, and there is an active forum to help with anything you might get stuck with.  Once you do all your reading and learning, it literally is a process that takes about an hour from start to finish.

There IS a possibility of bricking your phone if you do not follow the instructions to the letter, so if you decide to take the process on, please make sure to educate yourself.  The risk is small compared to the benefits you get when you upgrade.

Here is the listing of what you get, and what you won’t, when you install this ROM, straight from the Cyanogen site:

What’s NOT included that you’d find on a Nexus One:

• Launcher2 (too clunky for these devices)
• Stock Live Wallpapers (LWP support is there, but may not work with all LWP apps and/or performance may be bad)
• Facebook (install from the Market, contact sync works perfect)
• Google Voice (install from Market, push notify works perfect)

What’s included:

• Everything that goes with Eclair
• 3D, video, camera, camcorder, BT, WiFi, etc are all of course working

CyanogenMod extras:

• Can be used with or without Google applications
• Kernel 2.6.33.3 with tethering support, Compcache, VPN/tun, and other modules (cifs, nfs, aufs, fuse)
• New Apps2SD method implemented mostly by Chris Soyars.
• Built in USB tether
• Graphical enhancements, #boobs, and excellent wallpapers by Prash and SatanR1
• Includes BusyBox, htop, nano, powertop, openvpn, bash, irssi, and all engineering commandline utilities
• FLAC audio support from Kenny Root
• Phone enhancements from Cytown
• Contacts enhancements from Wysie
• MMS enhancements from, well, everyone (see changelog)
• Perform zipalign-on-install of applications
• DeskClock tweaks- longer autosilence and “require unlock” option
• Massive APN list
• All available locales are included thanks to PsychoI3oy
• 360-degree auto-orientation by Optedoblivion and Elanthis (enable in settings)
• OpenVPN integration thanks to James Bottomley
• Music app can respond to long-press on the volume buttons (from Metalhead)
• Many other bugfixes and tweaks from AOSP contributors
• Tons of work on the build system by Koush and Chris Soyars

Looking at this list, I can tell you that it is accurate.  Everything in the build works really well.  I have several Live Wallpapers working without a lag in performance.  There are some that do crash the handset, so it is a hit or miss thing installing them.  There are several new widgets that come with Eclair, including a native news widget that updates live, a YouTube widget that lets you post and browse, as well as a Facebook and twitter widget that come with the new builds of those applications.

Now, one of the things I was afraid of happening when I installed this ROM was that it was going to feel like I had installed Windows Vista on a x486 machine trying to make it work just to say that I did. But I can report to you that this ROM is fast, smooth and has VERY little performance issues.  Scrolling through the 5 panes is fluid with no lag at all.  Indeed it honestly feels smoother than it did on my stock ROM build from Google.  Originally I would have to be careful of what I installed on the desktop since it would bog my phone down.  Not so with the cyanogen mod; I have all the widgets my little heart desires running with no issues.

Now, there is one pretty big issue with this mod, and that is the fact that for some reason is sucks the G1’s battery dry in 4 hours.  This is a known bug which they are working on, there has already been a second release of the mod addressing this issue along with some other minor bugs. Also, when you take a picture with your phone, the preview image is screwed up.  However, the image has been taken and is stored on the phone.

I have installed several applications and all run perfect.  Google Voice, Maps, Places, the new Twitter app, Facebook, Nesoid all running like a top.  Having the latest enhancements to Voice and Maps has been amazing.  Since I use my G1 as a business phone that is hooked into a Google Apps account, I have struggled with Maps because I cannot access any kind of maps I create on my laptop.  Now, I can use multiple Google accounts allowing me to switch in and out on the Maps application.  I literally have the best of both worlds now.

An interesting thing that happened as well when I added another account to my phone, it triggered a congrats message from Google, thanking me for my Nexus One purchase. I found that pretty funny.

I can honestly say that I feel like I have a brand new handset because of this mod.  My G1 feels quick and relevant again. No thanks to Google. Being and early adopter with Google seems to get you the shaft a bit. I am thankful that Cyanogen took the time to spread the 2.1 love to us lowly people who have the G1.  Stay tuned for more details as this mod mover from Beta to stable release.

On September 23, the world was officially introduced to the HTC Dream, now known as the T-Mobile G1, and the initial reaction ranged from “That’s it?” to “I have to have it!” Unfortunately, we fell more into the “That’s it?” camp. From the outset, the G1 offered more functionality than the original iPhone and even the current iPhone 3G (before iPhone OS 3.0), including copy and paste, multimedia messaging, a better camera, and Google Street View. It also delivers good call quality and snappy performance. T-Mobile’s recent roll out of the Android 1.5 Cupcake update also fixes the issue of previously missing features, including video recording, stereo Bluetooth support, and a soft keyboard. However, there are still some omissions, such native Microsoft Exchange support, and nagging design quirks that left us cold.

Despite these complaints, we did come away impressed with the Google Android operating system. There’s huge potential for the G1 (and any Android devices after it) to become powerful minicomputers as developers create more applications for the open platform. Right now, there are only about 35 apps in the store, so we feel the G1 is a bit limited. Obviously, there’s enough curiosity about Google Android to attract buyers; and in fact, preorders for the G1 have already sold out. However, it doesn’t quite offer the mass appeal and ease of use of an iPhone, so the G1 isn’t a good fit for anyone making the jump from a regular cell phone to their first smartphone. Power business users also might want to hold off until more corporate support and productivity applications are added. We’d say the T-Mobile G1 is best-suited for early adopters and gadget hounds who love tinkering around and modding their devices. We’ll continue to test the G1 and applications as more are added, and though we hope for better hardware in the future, we’re excited about Google Android and feel it could change the way we use smartphones. The T-Mobile G1 will be available through T-Mobile black, white, or bronze and costs $149.99 with a two-year contract.

Design
The T-Mobile G1 is manufactured by HTC and has a similar look and feel to the company’s other Pocket PC smartphones, such as the T-Mobile Wing and the Sprint Mogul. Measuring 4.6 inches tall by 2.1 inches wide by 0.6 inch deep and weighing 5.6 ounces, the G1 is definitely not the sleekest device, and we certainly wouldn’t call it sexy. Instead, the words “interesting” and “weird” come to mind. This is mostly because the bottom section of the phone juts out at a slight angle. We asked HTC about this design decision but have yet to hear from them as of press time. Presumably, it’s to get the phone’s speaker closer to your mouth, which isn’t a bad thing but consequently, it affects the ergonomics of the keyboard, which we’ll touch on later. In a battle of pure looks, the iPhone would win hands down.

In a battle based on looks, we’d probably have to give it to the Apple iPhone.

Keyboard
That said, the G1 has solid construction and features a soft-touch finish on the back that provides a nice rubberlike texture, making it easy to grip the phone and comfortable to hold. Also, there’s a good reason for G1’s larger size: a full QWERTY keyboard. There are a number of users who are reluctant to switch to a full touch-screen smartphone because of the lack of a tactile keyboard, so the G1 is certainly an attractive option for such customers.

To access the keyboard, just push the screen to the right. The sliding mechanism is fairly interesting in that it’s not a straight up-and-down motion; the screen actually swings out slightly to the left before snapping into place. We were indifferent to this design quirk; we didn’t find any particular advantage or disadvantage, just something to note. The sliding motion was smooth, but after a few days of use, we started to notice a creaking sound whenever we nudged the screen–not good.

The T-Mobile G1 has the advantage of a full QWERTY keyboard. While spacious, the bottom portion of the phone makes it awkward to type.

The keyboard itself is a reminiscent of the T-Mobile Sidekick, as many observers pointed out during our review period. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since we like the Sidekick’s keyboard. The buttons are a bit small, but overall the keyboard feels roomy and there’s enough spacing between the keys that we think it shouldn’t give too many users problems. If anything, we wish the buttons were raised a bit more, since right now, they’re set flush with the phone’s surface. The bigger issue is that the bottom section of the G1 makes it awkward to hold the phone when typing messages, since your right hand doesn’t quite have the full range of motion. It definitely affected the speed and accuracy of typing.

With the release of the Android 1.5 update, the G1 now has an onscreen portrait and landscape keyboard, providing you with another way to enter text onto the smartphone. With a physical keyboard, some might wonder why a soft keyboard is even needed but it was annoying and inconvenient to have to slide open the phone every time you wanted to type anything, such as a simple search term or a URL address, so we’re happy to see this added feature. In addition, the update supports the installation of third-party keyboards as well.

Touch screen
When you slide open the phone, the screen orientation automatically switches from portrait to landscape mode. With the Cupcake update, the G1’s built-in accelerometer has been activated to work in a number of applications, such as e-mail, the Web browser, Google Maps, and more, so the screen orientation will automatically change when you rotate the phone.

The actual display measures 3.2 inches diagonally and has a 320×480 resolution. It’s vibrant and sharp, and like the iPhone and RIM BlackBerry Storm, the touch screen is capacitive, so it will only respond to the touch of your finger and not your fingernail or other objects like a stylus. The G1 provides haptic feedback, but only for certain actions and not with every touch. First, you’ll feel a slight vibration when performing a long press on an icon. Overall, we thought this was fine, but there were times when the G1 didn’t register our actions, so some kind of confirmation would have been nice.

To access various functions within an application, you can perform another long press and a window will pop up with your options. It’s contextual, so the menu items will always be relevant to the program you are in. You can swiftly navigate through lists with a quick flick, or you can drag your finger for a slower, more precise look. In addition, you can pan and move Web pages and other documents by holding and then moving your finger around the screen. Unlike the iPhone, however, the G1’s touch screen isn’t multitouch, so you can’t zoom in and out of pages by pinching your fingers apart. Admittedly, we really missed this feature, since it makes viewing Web pages and pictures easy, but it’s not necessary.

User interface
Overall, the T-Mobile G1’s interface is clean, fun, and easy to use. You have the freedom to customize the Home screen with your favorite apps, and you can do this in a couple of ways. For example, you can do a long press on the Home page, which will bring up a menu where you can add shortcuts, widgets, or change the wallpaper. The Android 1.5 update also brings a home screen widget bundle of an analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search.

To add more shortcuts, there’s a little tab along the bottom edge of the screen that you can touch and then pull up, which will reveal a full menu of applications. From there, you do a long press on an icon and then drag it to the Home screen. To remove it, perform the same touch action and then drag it to the trash can. Note that this action simply removes it from the screen and doesn’t delete the application from your device. There are also sliding panels to the left and right where you can add more shortcuts, and there’s a notification bar at the top, which you can pull down like a window shade and view missed calls, new messages, downloads, and more.

There’s a lot to like about the G1 interface, with its glass touch-screen display, the slide-out QWERTY keyboard (although we don’t like the small keys), and the Pearl-like trackball for navigation. We would even say that the responsiveness of the touch screen is on a par with that on the iPhone’s. But we have to say its overall interface just isn’t as intuitive. For example, as with most every other phone, the need to dip into the menu layout every time we wanted to access something can get a bit clunky. Yes, it’s possible to drag out your favorite applications as shortcuts, but that means you need to spend quite a bit of time setting that up. With the iPhone, there is no home screen at all; you’re brought directly to the menu. We realize that the iPhone is a very unique phone in this sense, but in a strict comparison between the G1 and the iPhone, the iPhone’s interface wins out.

While you’ll use the touch screen most of the time, there are some navigation buttons below the display, including a trackball and a Menu key.

Also, though we like the aforementioned trackball and menu bar, it just isn’t quite as smooth as the multitouch gestures on the iPhone, especially for zooming in and out of pictures. This is even more apparent in the browser application, which we’ll explore later.

Exterior features
Below the display, you get some tactile navigation controls, including Talk and End/Power buttons, a Home shortcut, a back button, a trackball navigator, and a Menu key. Similar to the touch screen, the Menu button is contextual to what application you’re in at the time. For example, if you’re in the Web browser and press Menu, you will get options to open a new window, go to a URL, bookmark a page, and so on. It’s a minor issue, but we’re a bit annoyed that pressing the End/Power key automatically locks the handset; we’re used to having the End/Power key as a shortcut to exit the application. Because of this, we ended up having to unlock the screen frequently, which got annoying.

The left spine holds a volume rocker and a microSD expansion slot. To access the latter, you have to push the screen open in order to remove the protective cover. On the right side, you will find a camera activation/capture button, though you can also press the trackball to take pictures. We actually preferred this method, since the dedicated camera key was a bit small. Plus, when holding the phone horizontally, our thumb had a tendency to keep nudging the screen upward while trying to take a picture.

Much to our disappointment, the G1 does not have a standard headphone jack; instead, you must use the USB port and an audio adapter.

On the bottom of the unit, there is a mini USB port, which is protected by an attached cover. This is where you can connect the power charger and sadly, this is also your only option for connecting a headset. There’s no dedicated headphone jack, 3.5mm or otherwise, which is really disappointing. We’ve asked HTC about this decision, but again, have yet to hear back from them as of press time. Yes, there’s a headset included in the box, but you don’t get the same comfort and quality as you would with a nice pair of headphones. If you want the privilege of using your own ‘phones, you’ll have to spend extra money to buy an adapter.

Last but not least, the camera lens sans flash or self-portrait mirror is located on the back, and the G1 offers a user-replaceable battery.

Accessories
The T-Mobile G1 comes packaged with a travel charger, a USB cable, a wired headset, a 1GB microSD card, a soft protective case, and reference material. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.

Features
As the first smartphone to run the Google Android operating system, what does the T-Mobile G1 offer? Well, it delivers a lot of the basic core functions and of course, tight integration with Google’s products, including Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Calendar. Wireless options and multimedia capabilities are also well represented on the G1.

Voice features
The T-Mobile G1 is a quad-band world phone and offers a speakerphone, voice dialing, conference calling, and speed dial. There is not support for visual voice mail. The address book is limited only by the available memory, while the SIM card can hold an additional 250 contacts. One nice convenience is if you have a Gmail account; all your contacts will automatically be synchronized to the phone book, and Android 1.5 lets you see your Google Talk friends’ status in your address book as well as in messaging apps. Each entry has room for multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses, IM handles, postal address, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo to a contact as well as a group ID and one of 33 polyphonic ringtones. There’s even a setting to send a contact’s phone call directly to voice mail every time–good if you really don’t like someone we suppose. The G1 supports T-Mobile’s MyFaves service, giving you unlimited calls to five contacts, regardless of carrier. Individual plans for MyFaves start at $29.99 a month.

Bluetooth is onboard with support for wireless headsets, hands-free kits, and now thanks to Android 1.5, stereo Bluetooth and audio/video remote control.

Wi-Fi and 3G
The T-Mobile G1 is the carrier’s first 3G-capable smartphone, operating on the 1700/2100MHz bands. As of this writing, T-Mobile has rolled out 3G to 20 markets: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Orlando, Fla., Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle. The carrier plans to expand coverage to a total of 27 markets by the end of 2008, including Birmingham, Ala., Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Memphis, Tenn., Sacramento, Calif., and Tampa, Fla. And as we know, T-Mobile has now backed off its initial 1GB data usage cap, after numerous complaints.

As we noted in our iPhone 3G review, the 3G experience is all relative and depends on a number of factors, such as the number of people on the network at a given time, the type of Web pages you’re trying to load, and so forth. Before buying and investing in a 3G handset, it’s always a good idea to ask any friends and family with T-Mobile service and a 3G-capable phone about their experiences to get a better idea of what to expect. Also, make sure you have adequate T-Mobile 3G coverage in your area. T-Mobile won’t be selling the G1 in stores in areas outside of its 3G coverage. In those places you’ll have to buy it online.

The 3G speeds were good during our preliminary testing. As we did with the iPhone 3G, we checked out graphic-intensive sites like WorldofWarcraft.com, which loaded as quickly as 32 seconds, while CNET.com took about 50 seconds to fully load. Downloading applications from Android Market was also swift, with each application taking no more than 10 seconds. Meanwhile, YouTube clips over the 3G network took some time.

As an alternative to 3G, the G1 has integrated Wi-Fi and it can seamlessly transfer between 3G and accessible Wi-Fi networks. In fact, the smartphone’s YouTube application will only present videos in high resolution when you’re using Wi-Fi and play the low-res version when using the cellular network, in order to optimize the load times. Note, however, that to download songs from the Amazon MP3 store, you need a Wi-Fi connection (same as on the iPhone).Unfortunately, the G1 does not support T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home service. There is an application in the Android Market called iSkoot for Skype, which allows you to make Skype calls via the phone’s radio rather than Wi-Fi, but we imagine there will be VoIP clients added to the database.

There’s also a wireless manager under the Settings menu where you can turn on and off all the radios and set up connections. To save battery life, you can turn off 3G and revert to the EDGE network–a good idea if you don’t need to surf the Web or download apps or music.

Web browser
The T-Mobile G1 uses Webkit as the basis for its browser, which is also the core of the Safari browser found on the iPhone. It uses full HTML browsing, plus it has Java support, and you can surf almost every Web site–except the ones that use Flash. You can pan across the screen by using your finger, and even though you can’t zoom in via pinching as you can on the iPhone, you can bring up onscreen zoom controls at the bottom of the display. Similar to the iPhone, you can also double-tap on a Web page to zoom in on a particular section. Of course, you’re not limited to the touch screen when navigating the browser; in fact, we preferred to use the trackball to scroll around pages at times. You can also tab between multiple browser windows, and we like the fact that the browser settings are easily accessible via the browser menu itself. With the iPhone, you have to dig into the Settings menu to find the Safari settings. As with the iPhone, you can view the browser in both portrait and landscape modes.

But there are a few hiccups with the G1 browser that keep it from being a totally seamless experience. For example, we didn’t like that we had to bring up the browser menu to do basic browser navigation such as Back and Forward. Yes, there are keyboard shortcuts for these functions, but we don’t want to have to remember shortcuts all the time. And though this is more of the fault of the hardware than the browser itself, we found the G1’s smaller display makes browsing a bit more troublesome since you need to scroll around a lot more.

While the interface for the browser leaves a bit to be desired, we like that it has quite a number of customizable settings. They include text size, the ability to block pop-up windows, the option of turning off image loading, the option of autofitting the pages to the screen, the capability to enable or disable JavaScript, the option of not accepting cookies, and of course, the option to clear out the cache, history, cookies, and passwords. Perhaps the most intriguing browser option is that you can enable “Gears,” which are potential future applications that can extend the browser functionality. What this means is that Google might develop a way for you to take some of your Web stuff offline–imagine being able to edit your Google Docs without a signal, for example, and then sync it back online when you do have a signal. This isn’t available yet, but we think it has quite a lot of potential. The Cupcake update also brings some nice enhancements, such as search within a page, a unified Go and Search box, and the capability to copy and paste in the browser.

Android Market
Perhaps in a move to compete against the built-in App Store on the iPhone, Google has also come up with a mobile application store of its own, called Android Market. It’s laid out a bit differently than the iPhone’s App Store. For example, instead of having a page to themselves, the Featured applications are lined up at the top of the Android Market front page. Underneath that are shortcuts to the full list of applications, games, a search function, and a page of your downloaded applications called My Downloads. However, there doesn’t seem to be a place where you can download updated versions of your applications as on the iPhone, but perhaps that might not be necessary.

When you go into the Applications list, you will find them arranged in categories, like Productivity, Lifestyle, and so forth. There’s also a category called Demos, which will presumably feature demo versions of paid software, which is certainly lacking in the iPhone App Store. At the time of this review, all the applications in the Android Market are free anyway, so the issue is moot for now. But hopefully the Demos category will be put to use when for-pay applications appear in the future, since it would be nice to try before you buy. Each category then lists the applications by popularity and by the date they were released. We like this a lot, especially since the applications in the iPhone App Store can’t be listed by date. Another nice feature of the Android Market is that each application has a list of warnings stating whether or not it’ll have access to the Internet, the phone’s GPS functionality, or your personal data.

We downloaded a few applications from the App Store. Since the App Store isn’t tied to a program like iTunes, you don’t need to enter in any log-in or password information to download the applications. This is a huge plus in our opinion. Downloading applications was a breeze on both Wi-Fi and over T-Mobile’s 3G network–we didn’t have a chance to download them over EDGE. After downloading them, the applications will appear in the menu as well as the My Downloads folder. However, there’s no option to save downloaded apps to a microSD card. While they don’t take up a lot of memory, it’d still be nice to have this option and is a sticking point with G1 owners.

E-mail and messaging
The G1 offers support for several e-mail account types. As a Google product, Gmail, of course, gets top billing, but you can also configure the smartphone to access POP3 and IMAP4. There’s full HTML support, so you’ll be able to view photos and graphics along with the text. You’ll have access to all of your folders and any action that you perform on the smartphone, such as deleting an e-mail, will be reflected in your real account. To the delight of many, we’re sure, you get copy-and-paste capabilities, and there’s an attachment viewer to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents, but note, you can’t edit said files (the iPhone is also view-only). We successfully set up our review unit with both our Gmail and Yahoo accounts simply by entering our log-in ID and password. Our Gmail contacts seamlessly transferred to the G1, and mobile e-mail delivery was sometimes faster than on our PC, but attachments took a while to download.

Bad news for business users. Sadly, there will be no Microsoft Exchange Server support at launch, so no synchronization with your Outlook e-mail, Calendar, Contacts, and so forth. You can check Outlook e-mail via OWA (Outlook Web Access), but we would have liked full support from the get-go. We think this is a pretty glaring omission. We assume all parties involved would want to attract both consumers and business users, and given the inclusion of a full QWERTY keyboard, the G1 would make a good messaging-centric device for the mobile professionals. However, without that Exchange support, it could be a turnoff for a lot of those customers.

The G1 comes preloaded with four instant-messaging clients, including Google Talk, AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger. You can keep IM chats in the background while working in other applications. The smartphone also offers threaded text messaging and yes, multimedia messaging.

Productivity and PIM tools
The T-Mobile G1 offers basic PIM (personal information management) and productivity tools. You get Calendar, Contacts, a calculator, and an alarm clock. The advantage of the T-Mobile G1 is that Contacts, Calendar, and Gmail are updated over the air, so you don’t have to synch up with your computer every day. Aside from the e-mail attachment viewer, Google Docs is supported for view only, but we couldn’t access a shared Google spreadsheet. Again, the T-Mobile G1 might not be the best choice for corporate users given that you can’t natively edit Office documents. However, DataViz has since released its Documents to Go Standard Suite for the G1, which provides this functionality.

GPS
The G1 offers assisted GPS and network-assisted location. Of course, Google Maps is preloaded on the device with standard map, satellite, and traffic views. In addition, you get Google Maps Street View, and there’s a compass mode that provides a 360-degree view of the street by simply moving the phone around (no other phone currently supports this feature). Basically, you just tap any point on a map and then touch the bubble to get a full-screen view of the street. You can then move the phone in any direction (up, down, left, or right); you can even spin in circles and the view will move with you.

You can search for various businesses and plan trips by entering start and end points. The G1 provides turn-by-turn driving directions, but not in real time like a standalone portable navigation device. Instead, you consult a list of text-based instructions or view the route on the map with step-by-step directions. However, you can add an app, such as TeleNav Navigator, to get real-time, voice-guided directions.

In our initial tests, GPS performance was mixed. While it was able to provide us with accurate text directions, we found that, more often than not, the G1 was slow to get a fix on our location and we were often greeted with the message, “Your location cannot be determined. We will keep trying but you can also try moving your position.” There were also a few times where the G1 placed us in the middle of the San Francisco Bay–yikes.

When Android 1.5 was first announced, Google and T-Mobile claimed that the update would bring improvements to the GPS performance, specifically faster acquisition of GPS location, and thankfully, this turned out to be true. In another test here in San Francisco, the G1 pinpointed our location within a minute under clear skies and followed our position closely as we traveled within the city.

Music and video
While Apple had the unenviable task of incorporating a full-blown iPod-like music player into the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1 is made to be more cell phone than music player and does not have that burden to carry. That said, the music player on the G1 is robust for what it is, and will satisfy most casual listeners. Songs are organized by Artists, Albums, Songs, and Playlists, as you would expect. You get the typical music player functions like shuffle, repeat, and the ability to create playlists on the fly. And even though there’s no CoverFlow, you can still view album art in a list format. We especially liked that you can instantly convert any song to a ringtone directly from the music player by hitting the “Use as ringtone” button.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the music player is its ties to the Amazon MP3 Store, Android’s answer to the iTunes Music Store. Unlike the iTunes Store, all the songs from the Amazon store are DRM-free, meaning you can do whatever you want to them–transfer them from computer to computer, edit them into shorter tracks, and more. Unfortunately, just like the iTunes Store, you can only download songs over Wi-Fi, and not over the 3G network.

To buy a song, all you need to do is use your Amazon account and then hit the buy button. Songs and albums are typically cheaper than those from iTunes–on Amazon a song is around $0.89 and an album can be anywhere from $5 to $9 (A song on iTunes is typically $0.99 and an album is around $9.99). You can browse the store by Top 100 Albums, Top 100 Songs, by genre, or just search for your favorite song or artist.

Of course you don’t have to buy songs from the Amazon MP3 Store if you don’t want to. You can upload any of your own music files into the G1. The G1 supports MP3, M4A, AMR, WMA, MIDI, WAV, Ogg Vorgis formats and has 192MB RAM and 256MB ROM. As we mentioned, the G1 comes with a 1GB microSD card, which comes preloaded with 11 songs. The expansion slot can support up to 8GB cards.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the G1 music player is hardware related. The G1 doesn’t have stereo Bluetooth, and it doesn’t have a 3.5-millimeter headset jack so you’ll have to get an audio adapter in order to use your favorite pair of headphones with the smartphone. The G1 certainly won’t be replacing your music player anytime soon..

The T-Mobile G1 features a microSD expansion slot on the left side, which can support cards up to 8GB.

In addition to the Amazon MP3 Store and music player, the T-Mobile G1 includes a dedicated YouTube application. The clips took quite a while to load via 3G, and quality wasn’t the greatest. Though images and audio were synchronized, it was quite blurry, but we were also watching a low-res version since we were using T-Mobile’s network instead of Wi-Fi. The screen orientation will go from portrait to landscape mode for videos.

Camera
The T-Mobile G1 is equipped with a 3.2-megapixel camera, and much to our delight, the Android 1.5 update now brings video recording capabilities (as well as MPEG-4 and 3GP video playback). On the downside, there are no camera settings, such as white balance, effects, and shooting modes. We recently reviewed the Motorola Krave, which also stripped these camera features, and Motorola said it was because its customers did not want this feature. We hope this doesn’t become a trend as we like having those editing options.

After taking numerous shots, this was the clearest picture we could take with the G1’s camera.

Taking pictures with the G1 was a challenge. You have to have a steady hand to get a clear shot, as the slightest movement will result in a blurry image. We took about 10 to 12 pictures before we could get a satisfactory shot, and by the end, we were fairly frustrated with the experience. Picture quality was mediocre. We found that objects on the outside had sharp definition, but got a bit soft in the middle. There was also a bit of a yellowish hue to the image. There was also a bit of shutter lag, which the Cupcake update was supposed to improve, but we didn’t notice a huge difference.

Video quality was pretty murky, though no worse than any other smartphone we’ve tested with the same feature, and again, we’re happy that this feature was added. In addition, you can now upload photos to Picasa and videos to YouTube, and the process is seamless.

Performance
The T-Mobile G1 does not require extra steps in the activation process like the iPhone 3G. You should be able to pop in your T-Mobile SIM and start using the smartphone right away. We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; UMTS/HSDPA 1700/2100) T-Mobile G1 in San Francisco using T-Mobile service, and call quality was good. We enjoyed good sound with minimal background noise, though audio was a bit blown out when the volume was set to the highest level. We had no problems interacting with an airline’s voice-automated response system and didn’t experience any dropped calls during our review period. Our friends also reported positive results, saying the sound quality was quite good. Unfortunately, the speakerphone wasn’t as pristine. On our end, the voices sounded tinny and garbled at times; meanwhile, our callers said that we sounded far away. We were able to pair the T-Mobile G1 with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

We were impressed by the snappy performance of the smartphone. The G1 was very responsive during our testing period, and we didn’t experience any system freezes or crashes. The T-Mobile G1 has a rated talk time of 5 hours and up to 5 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, we got 4 hours of continuous talk time on single charge; the result was the same for both EDGE and 3G. For audio playback (with Wi-Fi off and the phone on), the G1 lasted 4.8 hours while video battery life (also with Wi-Fi off and phone on) was 4.2 hours. According to FCC radiation tests, the G1 has a digital SAR rating of 1.11 watts per kilogram.

T-Mobile G1™ lets you touch, tap, swipe and scroll your way through all the coolest applications, your contacts, the Web and more. That means instant access to your information with a touch of the finger.

• Tap the screen and go
• Instant access to key information

Lock & Unlock Screen

Lock your phone’s screen with a unique pattern you set and keep your T-Mobile G1 secure.

• Keep your information private
• Avoid making accidental calls

Long Press Shortcuts

Touching the screen and holding your finger in place for a moment opens up a world of possibilities.

• Tap and hold on an icon to move it
• Create a picture frame for the home screen
• Pull up options for websites

QWERTY Keyboard

Together with the trackball and touch screen, the QWERTY keyboard makes it easy to get around the Web, type e-mail and respond to texts. Just flip the phone horizontally, slide open the keyboard and you’re ready to go.

• Type messages easily

One-Touch Google Search

The quickest way to get results. We’ve put the Google search bar just one touch away so you’re never far from an answer when you have a question. You can even search within your applications using the related search function. Listening to music? Search your music files.

• Search the Internet in one click

Google Search by voice

It’s a hands-free approach to searching. With Google Search by voice you can use your voice instead of the keyboard to explore the web.

• Search without typing with Google Search by voice
• Local results for where you are when you search

Contextual search

Browsing your music library? Search to find a particular album, artist, or song. On the web? Get web results. Looking at your contacts? Find a particular friend. Contextual search makes it easy to find what you’re looking for.

• Searches that are relevant to what you’re looking at
• Find what you’re looking for fast

Real Web Browsing

The T-Mobile G1™ was built to browse the Web. Using the touch screen, QWERTY keyboard and trackball you can access your favorite pages and browse like you were sitting at your computer.

• Access in one touch
• Real Web, not mobile version

Easy Access to Google Apps

Gmail™, GoogleTalk, Google Calendar, YouTube™, and even Google Maps are all easy to access and move between on the
T-Mobile G1™.

One-touch access to:

• Google Maps (My Location, satellite, traffic and Street View)
• Gmail
• YouTube
• Google Calendar
• Google Talk

Switch Between Applications

Move seamlessly from one application to the next. For example, clicking an address in your contacts pulls up Google Maps to display a map of that address.

• Dial phone numbers from emails, texts and the web with one touch
• Fewer clicks get you the info you want faster

3G Network and Wi-Fi Access

Not only can you navigate the real Web, you can do it at blazing speeds! Seamlessly moving between available 3G Network and Wi-Fi access, the T-Mobile G1™ gives you the Web when you’re on the go.

• High-speed 3G network
• Connect to open Wi-Fi networks automatically
• Also works on 2G and EDGE networks.
• Learn more about 3G

IM

Take your IM contacts on the road with Google Talk™. Sign in once with your Google account and all of your contacts and IM conversations are with you wherever you go. And, with the notification pane, you’ll never miss an important IM.

• IM from anywhere
• Stay notified of incoming messages, even with the application closed

Text

Say it without saying it. Sometimes you just can’t talk and that’s where texting comes in. With a full QWERTY keyboard, the T-Mobile G1™ makes staying in touch through texts a whole lot easier.

• QWERTY keyboard convenience

Email

Your Gmail™contacts are now no further away than your phone. All your actions sync with your online account so that you’re always up to date. Have more than just a Gmail account? No problem. You can access other email accounts as well.

• Connect while you’re on the go
• Access additional e-mail accounts (Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc.)

3.2 Megapixel Camera

With a capable digital camera built in, the
T-Mobile G1™ lets you capture high-quality photos of the moments that matter most and share them with friends. And with 1GB of memory (expandable to 8GB) you can afford to capture a lot of moments. It also features autofocus built in and a shortcut button to the camera on the side.

• High-quality photos
• Autofocus

YouTube™ Videos

With millions of videos from YouTube at your fingertips, you can find that funny video you were trying to tell your friend about and show it off from wherever you are.

• Millions of videos
• Access anywhere

Music Player

With the included 1GB memory card that you can expand to 8GB, you can listen to your music with the built in music player or on any computer. That means you’re never without your favorite tunes, no matter where you go.

• 1GB memory card included
• Expandable to 8GB

Android™ Market

Download the hottest applications from Android Market – just one touch away. With games, social networking, on-the-go shopping applications and more, you’ll get more done and get it done on your schedule. The possibilities are endless.

• One-touch access
• Games, social networking, on-the-go shopping and more
• Download wirelessly
• New applications available almost every day

Customizable Home Screen

Shuffle around your applications. Create wallpaper from your photos. Whatever you access most, or want to see everyday can be put front and center so your T-Mobile G1™ is as unique as you are. It’s all up to you.

• Drag and drop your favorite applications, photos or folders

Notification Pane

Keep track of downloads, check missed calls, voicemail and more. It’s all kept track of in the Notification Pane.

• Downloads
• Missed calls
• Voicemail
• Incoming IMs

• Display: 3.2 in (8.1 cm) TFT-LCD flat glass touch-sensitive HVGA screen with 480 X 320 pixel resolution. The capacitive touchscreen makes it impossible to use a standard stylus. Users can interact to bring up or move content with a finger touch, tapping or touch-drag motion.The touchscreen hardware is capable of multitouch gestures, but official release of Android (v1.0 to v1.6) available for the G1 have this functionality disabled at the kernel level. Users can patch the supplied version of Android, download a hacked version or update to Android 2.0 or later to make use of the multi-touch screen.

android phone htc tmobile g1 black

• CPU: The MSM7201A is an ARM-based, dual-core CPU/GPU from Qualcomm and contains many built-in features, including 3G and a GPU capable of up to 4 million triangles/sec. It has hardware acceleration for Java, but this does not accelerate execution of Android applications, as they are targeted to the Dalvik VM, not the Java VM.
• Keyboard: The HTC Dream has a sliding full 5 row QWERTY keyboard. It also comes with a set of 6 navigation buttons:
  • phone (green, black in UK) – make outbound calls, receive incoming calls, or open the dialer.
  • home (black) – displays home screen with shortcut icons for some applications and a drawer containing all applications on the phone.
  • trackball – navigate among items on the screen or scroll in text fields.
  • back (black) – return to the previous screen.
  • phone (red, black in UK) – end currently active call or put phone into sleep mode.
  • menu (black) – display the contextual menu for the current screen.
  • a touchscreen keyboard is available as of Android 1.5. Note: this feature does not work on phones sold to be used on the Rogers Wireless network.
• Side controls: A pair of volume buttons is located on the left side of the phone, and a camera button on the right side.
• Audio: In place of a headphone jack, the Dream (like many HTC smartphones) has a mini-USB-compatible ExtUSB jack that carries audio signals alongside the regular USB signals, and can be converted with a dongle (now shipped with the phone) to support any standard 3.5 mm headphone. The standard headset includes a clip-on microphone and call answer/hangup button. The Dream supports audio files in MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, and Ogg formats.
• Camera: The HTC Dream has a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus functionality.
• Video: The Dream can play H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and 3GP files. There is no light (“flash”) for the camera in low light conditions. Video recording and uploading to YouTube is available as of Android 1.5. Recording resolution 352×288 H.263 3GP Mono sound @ 8KHz.
• Storage: The HTC Dream has a microSD card slot and comes with a 1GB memory card (2GB in the UK, Germany and Canada). It has been confirmed to work with capacities up to 16GB, and may work with even larger cards. When the USB cable is connected to a computer, this computer can access the card without removing it from the HTC Dream. The phone can access media files arranged in folders, but the folders have to be created from a third-party file management application or from a computer.
• Battery: The HTC Dream has a user-replaceable, 3.7V, 1150 mAh (4.25Whr) rechargeable lithium ion battery, which is advertised to offer up to 130 hours of standby power.
• Orientation and location: The HTC Dream provides an accelerometer for detecting movement and determining which direction is ‘Up’. It also has a digital compass, giving it complete orientation data. The Dream includes a GPS receiver for fine-grained positioning, and can use cellular or wifi networks for coarse-grained positioning.
• Case: Three different colors are available: black, bronze, white.
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) using a Texas Instruments WL1251B chipset; Bluetooth 2.0+EDR via Texas Instruments BRF6300; ExtUSB with an SMSC USB3316 chipset; standalone GPS and A-GPS; Quad band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz and GPRS/EDGE, plus Dual band UMTS Bands I and IV (1700 & 2100MHz) and HSDPA/HSUPA (in US/Europe) at 7.2/2 Mbit/s using the Qualcomm RTR6285 chipset

 HTC G1 Software,Features

The HTC Dream runs the Android Operating System. Several applications that come installed with this device are:

• Full HTML web browser powered by the WebKit rendering engine
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Maps (with Latitude)
• Google Talk
• YouTube video player

In the United States, the carrier-subsidized firmware for the G1 also comes with an application for accessing the Amazon MP3 music store, which allows users to browse and legally purchase DRM-free songs; however, in developer firmwares this application is not included.More applications can be obtained through the Android Market application or directly through developers. Documents in Google Docs can be viewed, but not edited. However, spreadsheets in Google Docs (including the texts in them) can be edited.

HTC G1 Updating

The Dream firmware can be updated by flashing from an image stored on the microSD card. These images are cryptographically signed by either the phone manufacturer or network carrier. Along with other features, support for widgets were introduced through updates. As of Friday, December 18th, 2009, HTC and Rogers Wireless have both stated that they will not support Non-Google branded HTC Magic and HTC Dream phones past Android Version 1.5. HTC changed the content of its website to reflect this (Magic), (Dream), and Rogers Wireless notified the Android community by a post in AndroidForums.

Android HTC Tmobile G1 white

The HTC Dream was released in the US on 22 October 2008; in the UK on 30 October 2008; and became available in other European countries including Austria, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic in early 2009. It was released in Germany in February 2009 with a QWERTZ keyboard and in France in March 2009 with an AZERTY keyboard . On 10 March 2009, it became available in Poland as Era G1 under a local mobile brand affiliated with T-Mobile.

As of 2008, in the US, it was priced starting at $129.99 for new and existing T-Mobile customers if purchased with a two-year T-Mobile voice and data plan, and $399 without a contract.Contrary to claims made by T-Mobile representatives, the handset does not need the data plan to work; however, the Access Point Name (APN) settings need to be changed to make the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS-Picture Messages) work. The Dream comes in black, bronze (formerly called “brown”; except in the UK), or white.

On 23 April 2009, T-Mobile USA announced it had sold one million G1s since the device’s launch.

On 5 February 2009, the phone was released through Optus in Australia, as the HTC Dream. On 21 February 2009, Singapore became the first country in Asia to introduce the phone. It was sold by SingTel between $38 – $238 under various contracts. Telefónica also launched a version of the phone in Spain on 20 April 2009 with slightly modified control buttons.

On June 2, 2009 it was released through Rogers Wireless in Canada as the HTC Dream. This variant, DREA210, supports the UMTS 850 / 1900 bands and HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps for use on Rogers’ 3G network.