I had feared that this compromise would result in a chunky, bulky, pocket-bulging device, but I’m pleased to report that the G1 is actually…well, rather nice.
While it’s not a patch on the sleek lines and precise styling of Apple’s iPhone, the G1 doesn’t disgrace itself in the looks department. It has just a few buttons ranged beneath the 3.2in screen, including call answer and hang-up buttons, back and home buttons, and a menu button.
Interestingly, there’s also a BlackBerry-style trackball just in case you don’t fancy prodding the touchscreen to access applications. UK customers will be able to take their pick from black and white handsets, and I personally preferred the white version, which had an almost pearlised finish.
While, despite its best efforts, the G1 still falls short, aesthetically at least, of the iPhone, it goes toe-to-toe with Apple’s all-conquering mobile device when it comes to features.
As you would expect from Google, web browsing is a breeze. There’s one-touch access to a Google web search bar, simply by sliding a finger across the phone’s screen from right to left, as well as whenever your in the browser.
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And while the G1 lacks Apple’s patented”multi-touch” technology – which allows users to make pinching and expanding gestures with their fingers to zoom in and out of web pages and photos on the iPhone’s screen – the G1 retaliates with some tricks of its own, easily enabling users to magnify areas of a website at the touch of a button.
The G1, like the iPhone, lacks support for Flash videos – the sort of video clips we use on our Telegraph website, for instance – because of the type of processor chip used in the phone. And despite having a three-megapixel camera (still a paltry amount considering that Samsung recently launched an eight-megapixel cameraphone, but still a whole megapixel better than the iPhone, nonetheless), the G1, like the iPhone, can’t record videos.
The Android development team hinted that this might be something added in future versions of the device, but building video-capture straight into the handset at launch would have struck the iPhone a blow, and Google has failed to capitalise on that opportunity.
Annoyingly, the G1 lacks a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so I’m afraid you can forget about using your hideously expensive Bose noise-cancelling headphones with it – you’re stuck with HTC’s proprietary earphones.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that you’ll be able to not only listen to music on the G1, but buy music on the phone too. That’s because Google has signed a deal with Amazon to provide G1 users with one-click access to the Amazon MP3 store. The store is currently only available in the US, but rumours have been building for a while that it would be rolled out in the UK by the end of this year, and that would certainly tally nicely with the G1’s November launch date.
“Our goal is certainly to make music services available in all regions,” said Andy Rubin, Google’s senior director of mobile platforms. He was also keen to emphasise Android’s scalability and flexibility, calling it a future-proof platform. That’s because users of the G1, and other future Android handsets, will not only benefit from frequent improvements to the phone’s operating system, but also from the ability to add extra programs and software to the device by downloading applications from the Android Market.
This online superstore of additional content is the result of Google’s decision to make Android”open source”, which means anyone can write software for the platform for free.
Although the Android Market is still in the beta, or test, stage, there’s already a healthy selection of really excellent applications that suggest a great deal of innovation in this platform in future.
Early standouts include BreadCrumbz, a mapping program that overlays a route map, say, to a favourite picnic spot or scenic walk, with real photos taken by other users. Ecorio, another application, will calculate the carbon footprint of a journey you’re planning, and suggest other, more environmentally friendly modes of transport.
But my personal favourite was ShopSavvy, a price comparison engine. You use the G1’s camera to take a photo of a barcode on, say, a book or CD; the ShopSavvy software then translates that into a universal code, and runs a web search to find the cheapest place to buy that item. It can find the cheapest online stores, as well as give you a list, unprompted, of shops in your area selling that item, by using the G1’s built-in GPS.
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