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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.
In all the ads/product reviews I've seen so far, none has mentioned that it's build on an open source framework.
Whereas people will of course be plucking the fruits of the (free) apps that will be developed, right now it's not a selling point that makes any impression with the 'normal' user.
I hope that, once released, there will be a place where all the apps will be collected (maybe accessible from within the phone), otherwise I don't think that people will -ever- know about the existence of such apps.
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
Dan Grigsby looks at the Android G1 in 5 minutes from an iPhone developer's perspective.
Loren Feldman (1938media) throws in his own snarky-but-entertaining 2 cents.
So, Android needs to be ported, like any OS. Mobile phones, in particular, have very specific hardware. If you tried to put the OS from the G1 onto another phone, you'd need to add drivers for the other chips on it, especially things like the cellular baseband chip, and the hardware for things like audio input/output, LEDs, etc. It's sort of like RockBox in that it requires a large chunk of work to be ported. They initially ran on only one device, but, over time, gained additional compatibility.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
A few people have put together a list of all the apps observed in Market to date.
I'm sure this will flood with even more over the next week when they open the developer portal. Oh yea, and I reverse engineered the iTunes remote control protocol and released an Android client GPL'ed: http://dacp.jsharkey.org/
Distribution obviously android.
The G1 looks like it's so close to the general feature set of the Nokia internet tablets, plus the phone bits obviously. I'm wondering what the next stage of Nokia's 770, N800, N810 series will look like. They made a WiMax version of the N810 but I haven't seen any info about a new successor. The slide-out keyboard for the N810 seems to be a lot nicer than the G1's, and the general maemo development platform has been okay for me (especially since python is well-supported with fairly extensive maemo bindings).
If the G1 or its successor (G2?) supports Japanese input and output "out of the box" (but with English as the primary interface language) and has suitable J-E/E-J dictionary support, I'd be more interested. Haven't seen much info about that in the reviews or discussions of Android.
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1) Some phones will lockdown the kernel, some might allow you to replace the kernel.
2) Android drivers are open source, but vendors might throw in binary blobs (particularly for cell phone functionality).
3) They use their own custom GUI toolkit and display -- not X, not GTK, not QT, not swing.
4) The app store, sdk, etc are built for java. If you have a phone that isn't locked down, you could probably put native code on it, with some work.
5) Also, they use a custom jdk (and libraries), so the java apps have to be built specifically for android
6) Android is the distro. The app store is the package manager
7) The app store will be able to check for updates to installed apps
8) Debian can be used on some ARM and SH-based smart phones.
So, Android needs to be ported, like any OS. Mobile phones, in particular, have very specific hardware. If you tried to put the OS from the G1 onto another phone, you'd need to add drivers for the other chips on it, especially things like the cellular baseband chip, and the hardware for things like audio input/output, LEDs, etc. It's sort of like RockBox in that it requires a large chunk of work to be ported. They initially ran on only one device, but, over time, gained additional compatibility.
Ports shouldn't require a massive amount of work - mobile hardware seems to have evolved to a fairly common platform, ARM CPU, some LCD driver, audio device, wifi chip, etc. Many of those chipsets will already have Linux drivers, or slightly similar variants. When Linux was ported to the Xbox there was some amount of work, but a great deal was already done - the kernel ran on x86 already, the open source NV20 video driver worked with only some minor tweaks, audio was an Intel chipset and the driver worked with only minor changes, USB was a standard chipset and the driver worked immediately, etc. I doubt there are many mobile phones out there that would require the whole kernel porting from scratch, and certainly those that are wouldn't be used as the base for new Android based hardware.
I'll rephrase.
I'm not going to pay for the iPhone beacuse of the restrictive OS.
Severely restricted bluetooth, poor / absent MMS capability... Both blackmarks for me.
If I parted with that amount of money safe in the knowledge that an open source, extensible OS would slot in there quite nicely and not be subject to Apple's "you're not playing with that" mentality toward 3rd party apps, I'd be much happier about it.
It's not the hardware I dislike, it's the ball and chain operating system.
I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was going blame you for it!
From the article:
"When installing a new app, Android flags up which services - camera, network, GPS, etc. - it will use. That way, the user can judge whether the software is going to do what it claims it will, or something nefarious. It's useful, but it assumes a degree of understanding that many users just won't have."
Just what we need...the average cell phone user having to decide wheater or not something they are about to install is nefarious.
Get ready for automatic crank calls from a contact list worm.
Or better yet, a virus that will randomly take snapshots with the camera, and mail/text them to everyone in your contact list
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
You can bet that they're going to kill any app that enables tethering, or VoIP calls; the phone is totally open, as long as you don't compete with T-Mobile's other (profitable) services. Sounds more and more like the iPhone store...
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 ... in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion"
2) They state this in their Terms of Service: "Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement
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.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Without a doubt, people will compare the G1 to the iPhone and out of the box you honestly have to say the G1 wins over the original iPhone with wireless syncing capability, cut/copy/paste, games, a wireless music store, application store and 3rd party application support, integrated GPS, multiple client IM clients, and multi-tasking capability.
Unless I'm mistaken, all iPhones can run the 2.x software, so why would he compare it to the original iPhone's software? iPhone 2.x already includes MOST of those features, and I'm sure Apple's App Store is way ahead Google's right now.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Are all of the drivers open source?
Most probably not. The baseband chipsets that provide the network interface tend to be very, very proprietary, for example.
Is the desktop open? Which widget toolkit does it use - can you run gtk/qt/x apps on there?
Can you compile real apps or just Java?
I think you can probably compile anything you like, provided you have the appropriate cross-compiler and emulation environment and you can shoehorn the libraries onto the device.
Is there any chance of a proper distribution like Ubuntu being ported to this thing?
Ubuntu is working on their own mobile devices.
If anyone knows anything different from what I just said, feel free to correct me.
My blog
Severely restricted bluetooth, poor / absent MMS capability... Both blackmarks for me.
Since the G1 has the same limitations then, you must continue to be sad.
I still don't see why anyone would use MMS when they can email or post photos. I do find it odd the iPhone still has the same limited Bluetooth support, and that Android has matching limitations... I know it would hurt battery life but I really feel they should let the user choose here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here is a bigger problem: ... in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion."
"Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/16/android_kill_switch/
That is a show stopper. I'm still rooting for Openmoko.
More music, fewer hits
No, as in your cellphone connects over WiFi and any new calls are completely free. There's no need for an ATA, no need for a different handset, no complicated call forwarding setup, you just connect to WiFi and you cellphone becomes a free VoIP phone with your normal number and cellphone features.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The clause only covers applications distributed through the Android Market, but the whole point of Android is that anyone can distribute any applications they like.
Not quite as locked down as you think. The "App store" has the right to uninstall only the apps that it installed. I would imagine that Google is covering its ass in case someone releases malware or other potentially dangerous app into the Android store and gets downloaded by some unsuspecting users before anyone finds out. I doubt they'll remove legitimately useful apps "just because it competes with us". The resulting fallout would be enough to kill Android.
And unlike Apple, you don't need to use the Android Market to install software.
Sigs are for losers
Uh...if that's all you need from a phone why would you consider any but the cheapest (free w/ plan) phones?!?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Here is a bigger problem: ... in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion."
"Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement
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
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
4) They are simply covering their asses incase they accidentally send a program with malware through their store. If you install an ap through a source other than the store they cannot killswitch it. Which means about 10seconds more effort to install something at WORST.
that's only for apps distributed through the Android Market. i'm assuming this functionality is so that Google can immediately remove bad apps which violate licensing agreements or can potentially damage the phone (or contain major security holes) from all handsets that have purchased the app through Google.
presumably this will not affect non-Android-Market-installed apps. so if you want to install your own apps on the phone via another source you don't have to worry. is it a necessary feature? maybe not, but i can see why Google would reserve that ability.
it really shouldn't be all that surprising. if you break Google's developer distribution agreement, then of course they're going to remove your application. so if you don't want to be restricted by Google's distribution agreement, don't distribute your application through their site.
You do not make sense, a phone that just makes calls doesn't need an OS as complex as this. This OS is needed ONLY for smart phones. You might as well ask for a ferrari to put their engines into mopeds. No moped needs a 800 horse power en... I WANT ONE!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Because he's comparing the first generation of this phone to the first generation of that phone. That's not unreasonable, given that Android will see major upgrades quickly, just as the iPhone OS did."
Timing is everything, and everything moves quickly in the tech industry. The original iPhone without 3G is over a year old. That's old news. By the time Google has updated it's phone, Apple will have more updates too. Comparing what you can get now to a piece of technology that's a year old is dishonest and smacks of the old tactic where PC consumer mags that would always compare the latest PCs to older Macs and declaring that PCs won in head to head tests.
This is not properly comparing apples to apples (or as the case may be Apples to Androids). Compare what you can get now from Apple/AT&T with what you can get now from Google/T-mobile. I have no desire here to smack down google or be an Apple fanboi, I'm just saying for a smart review, you need proper comparisons.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
"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"
While the source for Android will eventually become available (as it isn't yet, and it will probably have binary bits), it only is useful if you can legitimately build and install onto the phone itself.
Since the source isn't available, and there are no firmware updaters out yet, nobody can say for sure one way or the other, I'll bet T-Mobile won't make it easy for you to put a new firmware on the phone without these limitations...just like the iPhone.
On the spectrum between totally open to completely locked down, the G1 is not that far away from the iPhone.
And no, I don't have an iPhone and am unlikely to acquire either of these devices in the near future.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
If you install the app yourself, considering source may be available, I'm sure you could change the name/reference for the app for your use, so that it won't be auto-nuked... I'm pretty sure this functionality will be limited to apps installed via the app store.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Does OpenMoko even have an app store?
Before you poo-poo the question, bear in mind you don't have to use Android Marketplace to install software on an Android phone. Android Marketplace is a trusted, easily accessible, application store. A kill-switch in that context makes sense, you've downloaded something from a trusted authority and it turns out it's malware, Google has an obligation to hit the kill switch or else at minimum destroy the credibility of the store.
From the reports, it doesn't appear as if the kill switch applies to non-marketplace software, as the switch only applies - according to Google's ToS - to software that violates the GM developer agreement.
I'm seriously not seeing the problem here. The phone is open - you can install anything you like on it. If you choose to have your hand held, Google will hold your hand for you, but you don't have to.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.