G1 – Google Phone!

Those of you who follow my blog regularly know that I recently purchased a G1 (Google Phone) for my Pooh for our anniversary. I got to play with his for a while and I really liked it. My K800i was pretty beat up because I accidentally dropped it…a couple times…many….accidentally…so I decided to get one for myself!

I like that the G1 runs on an open source platform. Another nice thing is that most of the downloadable applications are free!

The touch response is actually pretty nice. It’s fast, easy to use, and so far I haven’t noticed any slowing. I’ve read somewhere that for a system that doesn’t have manual closing for applications, even having opened several applications, there isn’t much lag and the responsiveness on the touchscreen is still fast. Even if it did experience any slowing, I wouldn’t mind because I’m pretty patient. Most of my Sony Ericssons had major lag issues and yet I still loved them. Anyway, if you don’t want to use the touch screen or if you’re viewing a webpage with pretty small links/buttons, the G1 comes equipped with a trackball that makes navigation extremely easy.

The battery life on the G1 unfortunately isn’t too great, but it’s nothing that really bugs me because I keep my phone charged at work and I have a car charger. :)

The QWERTY keyboard is really nice. It’s smooth, feels good, not too large, and not too small. I’ve been wanting a phone with a QWERTY keyboard for a while, especially one that I can use to blog with. You know what that means? It means I’ll definitely be making way more random blog posts while I’m on the go! Which brings me to my next point.

My only complaint is the camera. It’s a 3.2 megapixel camera that takes nice pictures with good lighting, but when are we ever in good lighting when Pooh and I are out ‘n about with our homies at the clubs?! Unfortunately, there is no flash and so images are no good without adequate lighting. This makes me want to shove my sim card back into my k800i Sony Cybershot phone so I can use my Xenon flash! Ah well, I guess I’ll have to lug arround my camera in addition to my phone.

Anyway, this random post ended up turning into a review of some kind. I still very much love this phone. Although my favorite color is Black (shade…hue…whatever), I got the white one because I thought it looked nice. I was going to trade with Pooh but he didn’t like that the QWERTY keyboard is harder to read on the white version. The white version’s keyboard is grey with black letters that when the backlight is on, the letters are white. The symbols and additional characters are in orange. When the backlight is lit and you’re using the phone in a well lit room, it’s kind of hard to read because there’s not too much of a contrast. The orange also doesn’t stand out either. This doesn’t really bother me because I just memorize where all the characters and symbols are. It bugs the hell out of Pooh though, I think it’s because he’s blind :P