The G1’s contacts, calendar and e-mail apps all sync with Google’s online services, T-Mobile reps said. The calendar is sleek and simple. The contact book includes presence information on Google Talk, and lets you dial, e-mail or IM with a tap.
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Android’s browser, which T-Mobile reps described as “Chrome Lite,” looks great. It had the best JavaScript performance of any mobile browser we’ve seen yet, popping down even complex JavaScript calendars that the iPhone struggles with.
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There are separate Gmail and e-mail icons, though the e-mail program can also handle Gmail. It pushes Gmail and pulls IMAP accounts. The IM program handles AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live and Yahoo!. Once again, it prefers Google services – Google Talk online status is integrated into the contact book, but none of the other IM statuses are.
T-Mobile G1 (Google Android Phone) – The G1 As a Smartphone – Reviews by PC Magazine.
After reading this review, I think the Android Phone is not the super iPhone killer that I was hoping it would be. It’s not that I want something to kill an iPhone, I’m actually quite liking everything that’s a Mac, but it was just that I expected a lot more from Google.
That being said, from a marketing point of view, I think they needed to release this handset asap to compete. Blackberry has the corporate market, with the iPhone being a sensation in the consumer market. If they did not release the handset now, they risked the iPhone saturating the market by Christmas time. Even that is not including all the other competitiors that will come into the market.
Since neither started out all that spectacular, I guess we will have to see if Apple or Google improves at a better rate. Perhaps that means I can hold off getting either the iPhone or the Andriod phone until Rogers’ ridiculous rates drop even more.
On the side, why do we need a separate data/phone plan? Mobile phones, if anything, are the best VOIP candidates! People buy mobile phones so often that new technology can be introduced in a couple of years, as opposed to having to dig up all the old infrastructure for land base VOIP.
