Saturday, November 29, 2008

My Experience with Google/TMobile G1

I bought TMobile G1 a day before thanks giving day. I bought it for couple of reasons mainly Android.
Some of the things I noticed needs more probing
1. From the browser coming back to home by clicking home button - How is the memory and opened process handled for application opened?
2. Omnibar of Chrome while entering url, if .com/org etc missed at the end doing search and listing the results but I expected somthing more like "I'm feeling lucky" in the desktop google search. Probably I could have missed something here (may be setting) but it would have been really good at the out of the box default setting.

Browsing Experience:
It comes close to iPhone but couple of minor issues. Some pages really slowly scrolled while swiping.
I also found that experience or behaviour of the system is not completely uniform across multiple applications. It is really glitch that will, i hope, be ironed out in later releases.

Google Map : I felt tough to follow while driving it is cool with compass mode, I need it give a try some more time.

Keyboard/Virtual keys: It is uneasy to use touch and keyboard as I am forced to use keyboard by thumbing the slide out and it is kind of messy. How can it be used by single hand? It is kind of worst mistake hybridizing touch and keyboard. Though OS and its responsiveness is very impressive but usability it was beaten to death.
So I returned the G1 and bought iPhone. In the end, I realized it is Google's well known secret that -release the thingy in Beta. So, I guess, not too far away, like chrome emerged from Beta - there will be a-phone or multiples but atleast a phone which will strongly carry Google's image and rivals iPhone from left, right, center will emerge. Probably HTC or Samsung will be its surrogate mother.
Harware:
I am not sure why google didn't pickup the right hardware from HTC, it already has Touch HD, it would have been tremendous success if google would have choosen good hardware. Google seems playing second fiddle with Apple iPhone.