REVISED

When I first wrote this Guide, G1 had only few days on the marketing... now things have changed considerable... so I made changes on the PROs and CONs to reflect the new reality on Jan-31-09

STOP

Before thinking about replacing your current cell phone with the new T-Mobile G1 I think it's really usefull to know for sure what you will gain and especially what you will lose with this trade.

This guide is meant to give you all the PROS and CONS of the new T-Mobile G1 (Google Phone). I am one of the first to deeply test all the funcionalities of this product, and I already have an opinion about it.

I believe some CONS described here will be taken care of in the future, since it's just a matter of software... so give time to the developers and soon we will have a great phone.

PROS & CONS

Connectivity

PRO: The T-Mobile G1 was designed to take  advantage of the mobile technology, so its hardware came with the capability of connecting your phone with pretty much anything. Regular phone band, wifi, bluetooth, T-Mobile Edge Network, and 3G network.

PRO: Installing a little application, your G1 will connect automatically to any T-Mobile HotSpot. Also, this application tells you the closest T-Mobile HotSpot.

CON: T-Mobile is working hard to install 3G networks on the major cities but if you purchase a G1 phone now and you are not serviced by the 3G network, you only will be able to experience a reasonable speed on the applications when you are connected to a wi-fi network. T-Mobile EDGE works, but it's too slow.

CON: The G1 Bluetooth connectivity only pairs with mono headphones. If you are intending to use your cool stereo bluetooth headphone to listen to your MP3s, forget it. The Android team is mentioning that they will release a firmware update soon... the problem is, how soon? So you will have to use the included headphone cable to listen to MP3. NO other headphone will work with G1, since it connects through the usb jack.

CON: Synchonizing your Outlook Contact List, Calendar automatically is impossible. You can synchronize your Outlook Calendar with your Google Calendar, and the application that does that needs to be set to work every certain time. The contact list situation is worse, you will have to MANUALLY export and import into the Google contact list. Task lists are not supported by Google so you have no task list on G1 for now.

Emails

PRO: The G1 can pretty much connect to any POP3 or IMAP server, you can setup many email accounts, and it will check all of them periodically -- according to your setup.

PRO: If you use a GMAIL account, it workd pretty well with googles imap service, so you are safe.

CON: It cannot connect directly to your MS Exchange.

CON: If someone sends you an email, you only will know on the next time your telephone check for emails... well, you can set it up to do that every 5 minutes, but that will kill your battery.

CON: If you setup a POP3 account, and after receiving many emails and delete some of them... you will have to delete each one again on the TRASH folder if you want to empty your trash folder. There is no Empty Trash Folder option.

CON  (revision Jan-31).: After a few months, you will see that your google email account will no longer receive emails... "CONNECTION ERROR" will show up 95% of the time... Solution: delete the account and add it again... Android team already knows of the problem, however no solution was yet released.

Google Integration

PRO: The G1 connects pretty well with Google Maps. If you are using a 3G network, it will be able to point your location on the map very well. Moving around the map, and even taking a look using the street view is fantastic. Using something called COMPASS mode, you can move your phone and it will change the view as if you were holding a camcorder.

PRO: You can see any document from your Google Docs.

PRO  (revision Jan-31).: There is a PDF reader already available, so you already can see PDF files. 

CON: You cannot EDIT your Google Docs. So, G1 has no text editor, no spread sheet capability, and no notes editor. There is no way to open and edit a MS Word file, nor an Excel file, and of course, Powerpoint don't even think about it.

CON: If you are intending to use Google Maps... you will need the 3G network or at least a wifi connection otherwise is too slow.

 

Multimedia:

PRO: G1 is able to store up to 8gb of data into a micro SD card. It can be accessed through an USB port and you can copy files directly into the SD card like a pen drive. That gives you a lot of space for songs, pictures, and videos.

PRO: The 3Mpixed digital camera is fantastic. You really can take great pictures with it.

PRO: There is already a SKYPE client for it. So you can use your skype account to call and receive calls through skype.

PRO  (revision Jan-31).: Skype itself already created a LIGHT VERSION for G1.

PRO: It plays MP3 and WMA files.

PRO: It connects directly to YouTube... and you can browse and watch YouTube videos as a charm. (need fast connection though) Watching video through the EDGE network is boring and the videos keep stopping.

PRO  (revision Jan-31).: Voice recorder is not a problem anymore, and there are applications that allow you to play MPEG-4 movies already available for free!!!

PRO  (revision Jan-31).: There is already a nice application that allows you to browse your SD card.

CON: The Camera software has no advanced features, it just take pictures. No zoon, no red-eyes remover, no smiling detection, not even timer. They will have to work on that for sure.

CON: There is NO VIDEO RECORDER... that's true. The G1 cannot record a video YET.

Hardware

PRO: G1 has everything the other phones have: A nice touch screen like iPhone, a great full keyboard as the MDA, and a tinny track ball like the Blackbery.

CON: If you need to type anything, you have to open up the keyboard. There is no option for a touch screen keyboard.

CON: The camera push button feels like week and it's hard to know if you are pushing it correctly... however you can use the little tracking ball as well as a shooter.

CON: The volume control also feels like you are not pushing anything.

CON: The full keyboard has some sort of a spring on it, wich makes it to open and close really fast, always making noise and giving you a clear impression that it will not last too long. With just a couple days of use, I already can see that the keyboard is being scrached on the back due the friction with the phone.

 

Browser

PRO:  Browses the internet. Has a good interface to move pages around, zoom in, and zoom out.

CON: Even though G1 has an application to watch YouTube videos, the browser will not play any FLASH animation nor videos.

 

Programming

PRO: Android gives a lot of support for those who want to become a Android developer. Everything is FREE (what does not happend if you want to wrire applications for Palm, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, or even iPhone) and there is a lot of ducumentation for developers to start. It seems to be easy to create applications for G1, and there are a lot of classes ready to be used available to developers.

PRO: Installing a development environment on a computer is a piece of cake. Just download the Java SDK, the Eclipse and the Android package for Eclipse (I am talking about Windows developers). Follow the instalation instructions and you are set to go.

 

Well, I hope this guide will help you on your decision. In my opinion, if you use your phone for serious business, don't migrate to Android yet... give the developers time to come up with great applications. I believe T-Mobile G1 phone is not cooked yet, but it will be!