The G1

So you've probably at least heard of the G1, possibly by its more common epithet "the Google phone". And, well, it is what it is; it's a phone-sized computer with a phone attached, and now I can play Zork anywhere, at any time. At least until I get a phone call, or need to make one.

The G1 is the first modern phone that I've owned: my last phone was a Motorola RAZR, whose UI was painful for anything but making calls by dialing the number. I've never texted much (see previous post); honestly I got the G1 mostly for a) mobile access to maps, b) mobile access to the Internet, and c) geek cred. (Yes, technically b subsumes a.) So far, in the month or so that I've had it, I've used it just enough not to be sure whether or not the additional $25 charge for the data plan is actually worth it. (I'll give it a full year and see.)

The touch-screen itself is consistent, but kind of irritating at times: the mechanism it uses apparently is heat-sensitive as well as touch-sensitive, since tapping it with a fingernail or stylus yields no reaction. (Although I just ran a DS stylus under hot water for a minute or so and tried that, and still got no reaction; this demonstrates nothing, since the stylus probably wasn't up to body temperature, but.) For all that, it is generally responsive when you actually want it to be. It's single-touch, not multi-touch like the iPhone, but I don't feel the lack.

The third-party applications currently available are a mixed lot. Too many are painfully unprofessional and unpolished. Worse, many of them request completely inappropriate things: ZXing, a barcode scanner application (listed simply as "Barcode Scanner" on Android Market), requests read and write access to one's contact list, as well as full internet access. Why does a barcode scanner need these things? (Answer: it doesn't, and I'll cover what's up with ZXing in detail in my next post.) However, there is still the occasional gem, such as Twisty (alluded to above), a Java implementation of the Z-machine, or ShopSavvy, a program that — given a barcode in the camera view — looks online for the best prices for that product near your current location.

The camera isn't, to my admittedly unprofessional eye, of very good quality: everything seems to be consistently reddish, and somewhat grainy, at least as displayed in the full-screen preview. (It's possible that actual pictures turn out better; I haven't done any serious testing on it.)

All in all, it's definitely an improvement over my old RAZR; as an early adopter of Android, I suppose I can't ask more than that of it yet. On a scale of 1 to 1, I give it a tentative 1.