Ronnie Tucker

T-mobile G1

It’s sleek, it’s sexy, and I’ve got one!

Ok, so I’m a bit late in boarding the G1 ship, but: ‘he who laughs last, laughs longest’.

Current best deal is £30 per month from T-mobile on an 18 month contract with unlimited 3G internet access. Now, I’m no mathematician, but 18 months. multiplied by £30 is… umm… *tap tap tap* £540! Sweet Jesus!

My (sexy white) G1 was £230 via eBay, £17 for an unlock code, and unlimited internet access for £5 per month by using a 3 PAYG sim card. Over the 18 month period, that’s a saving of about £200. And the 3 sim came with £10 of credit, so my first month of internet access is essentially free.

When I got the phone out of the box I got my IMEI code by entering: *#06# then headed over to the Unlock T-mobile G1 site, gave them my name, email address and IMEI code, paid by PayPal and waited for my unlock code.While waiting for the unlock code, I popped my PAYG 3 sim into my soon-to-be-old phone, and activated it, then added the £5/mth internet add-on. After just 30 minutes I got an email telling me my unlock code was waiting for me on their site. YESSSS!!!

Simply switching on the G1 with a non-T-mobile sim makes it ask for an unlock code. I entered my unlock code, and that was it! Easy peasy! Only thing I had to do now was, like the Unlock T-mobile G1 site said, to add an APN, which in this case was three.co.uk with no username, or password. Before the G1 lets you see/do anything, you let it log in to, or create you, a Google/Gmail account. Once it logs in, your off and running.

Ooh, sexeh!

You’re presented with the main desktop (or ‘home’) screen (shown up top) which has several short-cuts available to you. Holding down on the desktop gives you the option to add more short-cuts to either widgets, or applications. I added a short-cut to Gmail on my desktop. Pressing the MENU button has a control panel tab scroll up the screen, and display all the settings you’ll ever need. I used the email icon to set up my pop3 ronnietucker.co.uk email which it did very easily, guiding me step by step through the process with the G1 filling in most of the details for me. Next I just had to play with Google Maps. Using mobile phone network info it tries to get your position on the map, it was miles out for my position at that time, but with GPS on it was bang on. When the G1 logs in to your Google account it drags down your  Gmail contacts, emails and calendar info. So rather than edit contacts on the phone, it’s best to edit them on the web, this I did, and the G1 updated itself showing the contacts that I’d added on the web. Lovely. Text messaging, and emailing, are easy and, according to the manual, can be mixed. In other words; if you make a textmessage, add two phone numbers, and an email address, the G1 will send the two text messages (as texts), and for the third, will convert it to an email and send it via your chosen default email account. Nice touch.

The OS, as we all know by now, is the custom Linux OS from Google called Android. Google have obviously put a lot of love, and attention, in to Android. It’s sleek, polished, and everything animates smoothly. There’s no stylus with the G1, the emphasis now is to use your finger and it works well. Icons are a nice size (not too small), to scroll you press on the screen and drag up/down, and a press (with no movement) usually brings up a menu. Speaking of menu; if in doubt, press the MENU button. No matter where you are it will have more options for you to tinker with.

Android Market

And speaking of the OS, since it’s Linux, it’s open source, so every man, woman, and child is beavering away coding something for it. Installing applications (apps) is a breeze. You jab a digit on the Market button, and from there (above) you can choose a category, or search for something in particular. Think of the Android Market is a single, main, repository for all the apps you’ll ever need. Everything from IM clients (the G1 only does Jabber/Gtalk by default), to, my favourite, a spirit level. Yes, the G1 has a tilt sensor built in and holding one of the four sides to a surface displays how badly off centre it is (eg: my desk), or you can lay the phone flat and see how bad it is in 360 degrees. Great little app. I must have spent at least 20 minutes testing how off level everything in my room was, including the walls. You can install weather apps to give you forecasts, games, video players, and office applications. Jabbing ‘My Downloads’ gives you the option to uninstall any apps which fail to impress, also from here you can rate, and comment, on apps which you’ve tried. Speaking of office applications reminds me; why is Google Apps not on the G1? Beats me.

Let’s Get Physical…

First, physical, impressions of the G1? Nice! Its not too big, nor small, and although many people say it’s a bit on the heavy side, I don’t think it is. But I prefer a phone with a bit of weight in it. Makes me feel like I’m getting my monies worth. The slide porttion of the phone feels a bit clunky at first, but it’s nice none the less. The buttons on the front click nicely, and don’t wobble. I hate wobbly buttons. The trackball feels weird at first as it seems to be resting/rolling on a rough surface, it’s hard to explain, but once you get used to the feel of it, it’s fine. Typing with the G1 is easy as pie, and you have a full keyboard at your disposal. Many people complain about the camera, but I think it’s good enough for most purposes, even when I was playing around with it indoors I was getting reasonably good pictues considering it was indoors, and in comparison to other camera phones.

Time For The Minus Points…

Well, point to be exact. The only minus I can give it is the battery life. I reckon that if you had WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS all turned on, you’d be lucky to get a couple of hours out of it. With all of them turned off I could see the battery icon starting to draining on me after just a couple of hours playing with it. Not good. But you can charge it via USB as well as the main adapter. A small niggle at the moment is that Bluetooth is only working for devices, you can’t transfer files from place to place as yet, but according to rumours on the internet (so it must be true!) that, and lots of other things, will be fixed in the next update of Android, codenamed Cupcake.

Tech Toy

I was dubious (and felt guilty) about spending over £200 on a phone but, to be honest, the G1 is more than just a phone, it’s also a great tech toy. With the 3G (always on) internet, email checking (with announcements), fast web only a click away, easily installed apps covering every angle, and effectively being a hand held laptop, it’s a tinkerers dream! £200 well spent.

TIP: when you plug the G1 in to your USB port, Ubuntu won’t detect it. You need to hold down the USB icon that’s showing at the top left of the screen, and drag down. This will display a message you can click to effectively mount the G1 as a storage device. Took me a little while to figure that one out.