Full Review of the T-Mobile G1 Android Device

palmsolo writes "Want to see the biggest and most in-depth review of the T-Mobile G1 Google Android device from a person who has been using it for a week? Check out over 260 photos and 5 videos of the device and just about every screen of the Google Android OS. Find out how well HTC, T-Mobile and Google did with this first-generation device." I played with one for a few minutes and found it a solid unit. It feels less polished than the iPhone, but the screen and keyboard are great. It'll be a real test of Open Source to see what happens with the iPhone App Store's closed system vs. Android's open one.

Comments

Re:Not quite so open

[Piranhaa]

It's not as bad as you think. Before you compare it to Apple's kill switch....

1) The source is open. They're not hiding it from people's view, like Apple's. People had to dig down for Apple's to find it
2) They state this in their Terms of Service: "Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement ... in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion"
3) They offer a "return" (not sure how.. it's electric) within 24 hours if it's found the application has an issue and must be blocked. Apple does NOT do this.

App limitation to internal memory is odd

[SuperKendall]

One disturbing thing is that apps can only live in the internal phone memory (I believe 192MB). The point out most apps are just a MB or two, but as you see more games and more polished apps with more graphics, that number increases quickly. Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone for example, is I think 32MB or so.

I imagine it's for speed of access, but should probably still be allowed...

On the plus side, I had read before you could only sync with one google calendar but am happy to see you can at least see other calendars in addition to your own. But I think the limitation is still there to be able to only hook into one gmail account at a time, which I don't think I could work with as I have multiple gmail accounts for different domains.

Re:Not quite so open

[Em Ellel]

Here is a bigger problem:
"Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement ... in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion."

As per article, this applies only to apps sold through their App Store. What I am curious about is - does this mean they can delete any app (regardless of how you installed it) when you use the app store or does this mean they can only delete apps you got via their app store if they discover something is wrong with it? I can kind of understand the latter with proper disclosure, but it needs to be made much clearer.

-Em