I have seen it, and it is good.
Had the training today, with all of about 15 minutes to mess around with it. I am now what T-Mobile considers to be an "expert" on this device lol
Impressions:
It is small. It is NOT a fat hog like it sometimes appears in photos, so it makes a Wing look bloated, if not huge.
Although the overall in-person appearance is still relatively plain, the second it hits your hand it feels like money. Very good fit and finish. The way the screen opens is interesting, if nothing else. It hits full open and full close with a sharp snap; I had expected it to be sort of damped. It is assisted mechanically in both directions. The weight is perfect. It feels like a quality device while in your hand, as you would expect of HTC. It is JUST behind the Iphone in this touchy-feely regard. Well actually, I'll give that statement one caveat: I have NEVER felt comfortable holding an Iphone. There are no good surfaces to hold on to. Machined aluminum looks and feels upscale, but grippy it ain't. The G1 falls immediately, and comfortably, and securely, to hand.
When open, the screen isn't parallel with the keyboard. I have noticed this since the very first spy photos were released. I figured they would fix that, but they didn't. It doesn't really matter, and we are talking a TINY amount off, but as a person who literally CAN NOT focus on anything in a room until all pictures on the walls are level, I noticed it.
The upside is even though it snaps to the open position, it has a bit of built-in give to it should the screen get mashed too far in the open direction. It did NOT feel like slop, it feels like they are protecting the device from its users.
The keyboard is about perfect to me. The right amount of tactile feedback, and enough space between the keys. Much more useable than the Blackberry 8800 keyboard I am writing this on.
Why on earth don't all touch screen devices have a trackball? I didn't realize it, but between the touch and trackball, navigation is delicious. One of the few things I liked about the Sidekick LX I had was it had 2 D pads. Let's you drive around with double the control because each pad did slightly different things. It is the same net effect on the G1 with the trackball and the touch screen.
The buttons along the bottom of the phone are well-placed and extremely well integrated into how the phone works as you choose and use different items or apps. Point of order: the home key always takes you home, and the back key always takes you back! Makes it easy to learn to use because the keys aren't constantly changing functions. One very different thing is that if you hit the End button, it locks the screen, it doesn't take you home. That's what the home button is for, dummy!
And so we come to the interface. Very, very good. As a person who has about equal time using a G1 and an Iphone, the G1 is more immediately obvious in how to operate it. (After we finished, it occurred to me that Google sort of stole all the best parts of WM and the Iphone OS and combined them. If there are many really new ideas as far as how to simply select and move and use things on the phone, I didn't find them.) But again, I don't really have a lot of experience with an Iphone.
As far as the software and such, there is just no lag anywhere that we could find in the short amount of time we had. You select, you get. None of this WM waiting pinwheel bull****, no Blackberry hourglass bull****. It just goes.
The Android Market is neat, and already has a ton of apps of all flavors, the vast majority of which are free at the moment, but the device hasn't launched yet and so I'd expect this to change. We scanned the barcode on a bottle of Lysol wipes and discovered Wal-Mart had the best price. It even goes "beep" like a real barcode scanner when you are at a checkout stand.
I saw my house on Google Maps street view. It was a bit odd thinking someone drove down my street with some kind of photographic equipment for the sole purpose of having this on a map program, because it might be neat. It also occurred to me that if I actually look up an address before I go somewhere, it would probably be impossible to drive past it; you've already BEEN there, man!
As expected, integration with Youtube and all Google services was flawless. Just gorgeous.
I wish I had more info about it to share with you guys. It was running on Edge, not 3G, so downloads were not amazing, but you could tell the phone was waiting on the data and not the data waiting on the phone like on phones with slow processors. We had a race and opened Passatworld.com on it and it smoked this Blackberry. 3G should cause rapturous joy for all users.
Keep in mind that while this stuff interests me greatly, I am not the tech junkie that vuvision and many others on PW are. Maybe I am easily impressed, and I am also probably biased in favor of T-Mobile for obvious reasons. But then you guys also know I won't refrain from burning a house down just because I live in it.
That said, my overall, hands-on, Sharkified no bull**** initial evaluation is:
This device kicks serious, serious ass.
First impressions from a T-Mobile employee
Originally Posted by JimDog
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