Is Anyone Buying T-Mobile's Googlephone?

Hugh Pickens writes "Laura Holson writes in the NY Times that she 'wandered down to the T-Mobile store at Ninth Ave. and 43rd St. in New York City to see what kind of crowds — if any — were lining up to buy the new T-Mobile G1 which went on sale Wednesday' and saw no lines out the door, no crowding at the counter, and a complete lack of crowds. The iPhone appears to still be the gold standard and Etan Horowitz writes that the G1 'doesn't do a great job showcasing its potential. It isn't as intuitive as the iPhone, and it may take average users a while to figure out basic and advanced shortcuts and features' and 'may appeal more to techies who value open-source products and don't mind a somewhat steep learning curve.' Part of the reason for slow interest may also be that T-Mobile's 3G high-speed data network won't be up and running in many cities until the end of the year."

Comments

Because they're not Apple

[hansamurai]

Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?

Re:Because they're not Apple

[Zader]

Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?

Yup, because google doesn't know anything about advertising ...

Re:Because they're not Apple

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?

Without a doubt. However, it's not like these phones have reviewed exceptionally well.

Re:Because they're not Apple

[Lord Ender]

Yes but Google releases everything as beta first, and limits the rate at which people start using things (see: gmail invites). I suspect this is the "beta" gPhone, which will be continuously refined for a while until they are ready with the real deal. That's when the ad blitz will start.

Re:Because they're not Apple

[amram9999]

The G1 lacks enough storage for me, but the data plan is more attractive. The iPhone has the storage but the data plan is a potential nightmare.

Actually I prefer that the G1 has less storage and a microSD slot. MicroSD cards are very inexpensive so it's easy to increase the storage capacity of the device. When flash capacities have doubled (as they have been every year), it's easy to buy a new microSD card for $30, but it's impossible to increase the storage on your iPhone. This only works if your hardware and firmware support the larger microSD sizes, but the G1 supports SDHC cards and firmware updates so it's fairly future proof.

Re:Because they're not Apple

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Ding Ding Ding ~ give the man a cigar. They'll wait until it they have feed back from users and tweak it a bit. I'd wait until they release a few firmware, hardware, software updates and a normal headphone jack.

gee, what could the reasons be here?

[jollyreaper]

1. People don't even know if they'll have jobs next week, would they really be taking on an expensive new phone and plan?
2. There's no absolute media saturation and frenzy over the G1. Apple is very adept at building their marketing campaigns into beasts like self-sustaining fusion reactions that produce more energy than they consume, like firestorms sucking all the oxygen out of the city. Media that doesn't even want to report on tech will end up reporting on the craze surrounding the tech.
3. The G1, while building on the success of Google, isn't coming with quite the same mac/ipod buzz that the iPhone had going with it. Again, this goes back to 2, Apple is building upon the wave of successful hype of previous products.

I hear that RIM is trying to improve upon their berries given all of this competition from Apple and Google. To that I say GREAT! The more competition the better. The last berry I used was a hell of a product but RIM has been floundering for a while now. I want to see them recapture the mojo instead of flaming out like Palm.

Personally, I don't know which phone I'll end up getting. I'm no longer working in a capacity that requires a company phone so I'm not likely to have another berry unless I change jobs. The iPhone is incredibly seductive but the data plan sucks and I don't like it being closed-architecture. I don't yet know enough about the G1 to know whether it'll be a good fit but I like what I've seen so far.

I know why I won't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't available here in Finland, so... Yeah.

But well, I've never understood that culture in USA... Comparing products based on the day that they come out. Just like with movie theatres there, the most used way to determine if movie is successfull seems to be how well it sells during the first weekend: Before anyone has had the chance to see it and tell others if it is good or not.

I wouldn't think much based on just these days. Also, the "Steeper learning curve" and "Shortcuts might take some time to get used to..."... WTF? Does ANYONE think of those things when buying a phone? "I would buy that but the learning curve is too steep..."? I would understand if it was "The user interface is horrible" but this?

Stop calling Apple products intuitive

[johnlcallaway]

The iPhone is NOT any more intuitive than any other phone. It is not intuitive to use two fingers spreading in and out to zoom in and out. It is not intuitive to change the screen orientation by rotating it if it only works when holding the unit somewhat vertical. (That drove my daughter nuts until I explained how gravity works with the phone.)

The iPod is NOT any more intuitive than any other music player. It is not intuitive to have to return to the now-playing screen to change the volume. It is not intuitive to run your finger around a circle to change volume or select items. And not being able to edit play lists is just inexcusable.

The Apple was NOT any more intuitive than any other computer. Dragging the CD to the trashcan to eject it was not intuitive. People exposed to Windows did not deal well with the lack of right click and that silly Apple key until shown what they were for.

Intuitive means directly apprehended or instinctive. Something is not intuitive if basic features require demonstration or having to read the manual. Apple products have some cool features that once exposed to can make them easier to use. That isn't intuitive, it's user friendly.

Re:Stop calling Apple products intuitive

[Knight2K]

A better term might be "discoverable". If you can play with it and figure out what it does without consulting the manual or asking someone else, then it has high "discover-ability". Combine that with "consistent": knowledge of one part of the system helps you to use other parts of the system that you haven't tried yet. Those terms together get at what many people mean when they say "intuitive"

From the time I've spent playing with demo iPhones and Touches the interface was pretty easy to understand. When you turn the phone sideways, it goes into landscape mode and it pretty much does that everywhere, so it is consistent. It is also consistent with what I would expect in the real world; if I'm orienting the screen sideways, I probably want to use it so the long edge is the top now. You can also learn that pretty easily just by trying it, so it is also discoverable. When the iPhone breaks consistency, like the lack of a landscape keyboard in some apps, people complain, which indicates that consistent behavior is part of what we think of as "intuitive".

Zooming in and out works by pinching and pulling, which isn't very discoverable, but it makes sense a certain amount of real-world logical sense ( I'm stretching a photo to make it bigger, squishing it to make it smaller). Once you learn it, you can try that same action in other places and it will do pretty much what you expect (discoverable and consistent). Of course, you can get away with some of those things on a media player because many operations aren't really destructive; you can play with the device to see how it works. If stretching a word processing document ripped it in half and deleted it, that would probably be a different story.

I've tried the Android emulator a bit, so I have some familiarity with the interface. I think I could pretty much figure out how to do most things I'd want to do with it, but it definitely has the feeling of a computer interface shrunk to fit a phone. I think it is discoverable, but from playing with it and reading the reviews, it isn't consistent, so it ultimately isn't as discoverable as the iPhone is.

The iPhone software, on the other hand, feels more like it is purpose-built for the phone; like a part of the device as opposed to running on it. Even the main screen evokes a keypad layout like a touch tone phone rather than the desktop metaphor that Android shoehorns in.

Ultimately, I think that is Android's major challenge. It can't easily become part of a device out of the box because it could run on a range of hardware, while the iPhone software only has to support the iPhone and can blend smoothly with the hardware experience. This is in some ways more important than the relationship of Windows and OS X to their various hardware since we have certain expectations about how a phone should perform that PC's don't have. There is potential for Android to become more discoverable and consistent; personally I'm going to wait for the next Android phone to see if it has improved.