T-Mobile G1 Phone

The next phone in the 3G craze is the G1 from Android.  Android is a fairly large company that has many open source applications and created the OS for the G1.  With a name like Android, the phone sounds like something coming from outerspace… some of the features and applications feel like something only people or aliens from outerspace should understand.  Don’t get me wrong though, the phone is great.  I have been using it for a couple of months now and since the day I got it and today there has been a  major learning curve, but it has paid off.

First of all the call clarity on the phone is excellent, I have never had an issue with hearing people and having them hear me.  The touch screen is very responsive and initiates the commands promptly.   The “Apps store” is great with tons of different apps to apply to the phone for free!  Everything from GPS, to games, and short cut applications.  There are some apps that you will find do not work that well and others that are superb.

The biggest downfall for the phone is that there is no corporate email function like Microsoft’s Active sync.  There are a couple of 3rd party software applications that help alleviate this issue though and I use one of them.  The 3G on this phone works well, but it drains the battery something fierce.  I usually only use the 2G functionality.

Overall this is a great phone that I would recommend to anyone on the T-Mobile network who has a little bit of compute savvy in them.  The G2 should be coming out very soon so be on the lookout for that phone as well.

Sprint and HTC just recently launched the new “touch Diamond” phone. I have had the phone for about a month now and the touch flow OS is really nice. It is very different from any other phone I have had in the past, the likes of the HTC wing, and HTC MDA, SDA are in the same ballpark but not the same concept. The phone is out to compete with the Iphone which gets so much attention that every time I hear about it I want to puke. Not to mention the Ipod is keeping just about every plastic and speaker manufacturer on the planet in business with companies making a docking station for it. Woot has a docking station on clearance every other day!

The phone itself is small, smaller than what I am used to but It has a nice weight and feel to it in the hand. It sports a 3.2 Megapixel camera complete with video capture as well….which is really nice. The camera does have a major flaw though, the person or landscape has to be completely still or the picture turns out really blurry… ugh!

The touch flow OS allows one finger navigation thoughout all of the programs… contacts, emails, pictures, etc.. It is very responsive as well, you don’t have to press your finger too hard against the phone to get a response. The phone currently uses the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 which has some great features in itself. Using active sync is easy and flawless on this OS, I had the phone for no longer than 15 minutes and already had my email, contacts, and calendar synced up from my Outlook.

All in all I would recommend this phone to anyone that has a slightly computer literate mind and has enough money to buy one right now… they are not cheap. As this was written they are going for $400-$500 on ebay, or I’m sure Sprint would not mind trapping you in a 2 year contract to knock a few hundred bucks off the price.