The gPhone or Android is Intriguing

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I had the opportunity to handle two Google Android first generation mobile phones today, the T-Mobile G1, and while the shape (form factor) is a bit odd, I did enjoy playing with the user interface much more than any of the iPhones I have tried.

Gasp! Shock! Blasphemy!

Every time I use a friend's iPhone, I am left nonplussed and usually find it to be a bit frustrating of an experience. Yes, yes, yes, I know, I am weird. As with any interface, even learning to use the iPhone takes time. And the truth of the matter is that I am not intrigued enough by the iPhone to want to learn.

The iPhone, as I have detailed out before, has a crappy camera, no video capture, no MMS, and Apple has made it to be a closed sandbox.

For all the claims of the radical innovation and intuitive user interface, I will agree that bringing the metaphor of the web and Apple UI to a mobile device is new and can be delightful to use, but it is not for everyone. I am not the only person I know who has fondled and played with the iPhone and then went and bought another device.

Today I had the opportunity to talk with some folks who perused all the major smart phone options and decided to get the Google / T-Mobile G1 Android phone over the iPhone. After listening to them describe what they wanted and then saw how both of them had hacked/altered the home screen to fit their needs, as well as get a tour of the G1 mobile, I was intrigued.

Yes, the G1 has a crappy camera; yes, there is no video capture; but the UI and the physical handset made more sense to me than any time I have used an iPhone. I did not have to have steps explained to me as I was using it, my hands and mind figured it out. Everytime I use an iPhone, I get stuck and have to ask the owner what to do next - usually this is a question of what to do with the physical handset as I find it too abstracted.

The web browsing experience is good. As good or even better than the iPhone. I ran through a couple of websites that most mobile browsers choke on due to javascript & AJAX and the G1 rendered all the scripts and CSS correctly. Bravo!

What is most exciting to me about the G1 Android phone is that it is open source and one can use python to program it. I like Python. I like mobile python for S60 and will be interested in exploring the Android development platform.

The other two things I liked about the G1 was that it is smaller than the iPhone and I can hold it in one hand without fear of dropping it and it has a physical qwerty keyboard which was easy to use, even easier than the Nokia E71 keyboard.

So, Google, here are my challenges to you:

1) I love open source, but I love unlocked mobiles even better. I am willing to pay the extra for an unlocked phone.

2) Come on, Google, give Nokia, Casio & Sony a run for their money and put a real camera on the G1: at least 5 megapixels or better, with a flash, a quality image sensor chip, and then back it up with the computing power to process the algorithms for great digital camera work.

3) Video capture.

Looking forward to the next iteration of the Google Android phone.

by Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen on Sun November 30, 2008 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | moleskine to mobile

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