T-Mobile G1 Cell Phone Review - Software
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Marianne Schultz Published on November 05, 2008 Comment on this |
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| The Android OS was stable and responsive throughout our review process, but it's still a very young and unproven platform. It shows great promise with the daily growth in the number of 3rd-party applications available for it, and a browser that already seems to be mature, offering many advanced features to make surfing the internet a pleasant experience. | |
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OS (7.0)
The Android operating system is a new one, and the G1 is the first phone available to use it. Our experience with it during the time it took to complete the review was favorable overall, though there are some annoying UI quirks that show inconsistency between applications and a lack of consideration for how people are most likely to use the device. Android was relatively stable, showing only minor hiccups and lags periodically and no crashes at all. It's clear that this firmware is a 1.0 version and we fully expect that future versions will show more polish and consistency.
A hallmark of the smartphone is the ability to use 3rd-party applications, and the Android Market, through which users can download apps directly on to the G1, was available at the phone's launch.
We have standard scores for phone operating systems, where, in general, the more mature, stable, and extensible the OS is, the more points it merits. Of course, the Android OS is brand new, but its open-source status indicates that more and more 3rd-party apps will become available over time, and its stability should increase with future iterations as well. Android shows great potential, and we view it as similar to the iPhone OS in these respects, earning the Android OS the same number of points in this area. We're looking forward to see how it will evolve over time.
Home Screen Score (7.0)
The G1's home screen has 3 panes that can be switched between easily using the trackball or simply flicking left and right on the touchscreen. The center pane is the main view and an analog clock and shortcuts to myFaves, Dialer, Contacts, Browser, and Maps are on this pane by default. The pane to the left is blank, and the pane to the right has a Google search bar at the top.
The 3 panes of the G1's home screen
The status bar, which appears in each pane, shows the expected information on signal strength, time, battery level, and indicators for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other items when applicable. The status bar handily slides down to show more information about alerts for missed calls, new text messages, emails, voicemails, and more - this is an efficient way of getting more details on notifications that doesn't hog up home screen real estate. If this were truly a business-oriented phone, we'd expect information about upcoming appointments and other PIM data highlights on the home screen, but it's not and we don't.
Extensibility (4.0)
The Android OS is an open platform, and any developer can use the SDK to create any apps for it, without requiring approval from or oversight by Google. Developers can submit their apps to Google for inclusion in the Android Market, which can be easily accessed on the G1 itself, allowing every G1 user access to them. At the G1's launch, there were more than 50 3rd-party apps available in the Market, and this number has increased every day. All apps available at this time are free to users, and paid apps will be available starting in 2009.
The Android Market home page
The Market works much like the iPhone 3G's App Store - applications can be browsed by category or found by searching, information about what an app does and any user reviews are shown when an app is selected, and downloading and installing an app is a seamless process all done over-the-air without the need to connect to a computer. We downloaded some applications to see how it worked and how the apps looked, selecting PacMan, Shazam, The Weather Channel, and Pro Football. While we don't score 3rd-party apps not included on a phone out-of-the box, all of these apps looked pretty polished and functioned as expected.
Applications downloaded from the Android Market
It remains to be seen exactly how expansive the Android Marketplace will become. Established platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian have thousands of third-party apps available at a variety of price points to satisfy almost every possible user need, and it's not possible to predict if the Android OS will enjoy the same level of extensibility. At the moment, the Android Market shows a good start, and the fact that it is an open platform only enhances its potential.
Customizability (5.0)
The home screen is customizable - shortcuts to any other app can easily be added to and removed from any pane, and they can be re-arranged in any order as well and organized into folders. Things called widgets can also be added to the home screen - the analog clock and Google search bar that are there by default are examples of these, and more can already be found in the Android Market. The home screen's wallpaper can be changed, too - there are a few that are included, and pictures in the G1's photo album can also be used. There are no themes provided out of the box to change the application icon sets or the fonts system-wide, however.
The G1's main menu
While the Android OS doesn't offer the level of customizability to completely change the way the home screen or menus look, or show upcoming appointments and other PIM information, it does offer flexibility in relation to application shortcuts on the home screen, which is a boon for those who like quick access to certain things and the ability to sort and order them to their heart's content.
OS Responsiveness (5.0)
During our testing period, we found the Android OS to be pretty responsive, not showing nearly the same amount of frustrating lags found on the HTC Touch Diamond's TouchFLO interface, though it wasn't quite as buttery smooth as the iPhone 3G can be in some situations. Beyond this, the thing that slowed us down most often in navigating was the unintuitiveness of the interface, but this faded with familiarity.
We had absolutely no crashes on the G1 during our testing period, an impressive feat with such a new OS. We should note that we limited downloading and use of 3rd party applications, which can have a negative effect on stability on almost every smartphone platform.
Browser Features (9.0)
The G1's browser can easily handle HTML sites though it was hit or miss with the test WAP sites we tried. Flash and Java are a no-go, though Javascript and frames are handled with ease. Through the browser, it's not possible to subscribe to Atom or RSS feeds. Images on web pages can be saved to the G1 - these are placed in a special album named "downloads" in the Pictures application. In the settings menu, you can choose to display or not display images in web pages.
The G1's browser has many functions you'd expect in a smartphone's browser, including and password management, the ability to remember form data and handle encryption, and security options to clear the browser's cache and cookies, and show security warnings when issues are encountered.
Browsing Interface (10.0)
The G1's browser is pretty good and includes some advanced browsing features we like to see, if a little unintuitive in some ways. Web pages take up the entire screen, with no overlays or menus to take up any screen real estate. By default, the top left corner of a web page will be the focus when you navigate to it, despite the "Auto-fit pages" option checked in the Settings menu, which it is by default. Zooming is quite unintuitive - to bring up the zoom controls, you must tap on the screen. If you're on a page heavily laden with links, this will be a bit of a task to do without hitting a link. If you did hit a link by accident, stopping it from loading that link will take a bit of time, since you need to press the Menu button to get to the Stop button.
The zoomed view with the magnification lens in the top left
When you do have the zoom controls up, they're easy to use. Additionally, an icon in the bottom right zooms you out to view the almost the entire page at once, and a rectangular magnification lens appears on the page which can be moved around by finger or the trackball to select an area to zoom in to. The whole page view isn't as pleasant as the one you find on the iPhone 3G since it fails to take advantage of the full width of the screen in landscape mode. Speaking of landscape mode, the G1 does not switch automatically between portrait and landscape mode when the keyboard is closed, despite its internal motion sensor.
The browser view in portrait orientation
As expected, the Menu button will bring up a whole host of options to navigate, change settings, and more. From here, you can bring up a field to enter an URL to go to, perform a Google search, view Bookmarks, switch between multiple browser windows, refresh the current page, and more. Through that More button, you can navigate to the previous and following pages, bookmark the current page, send a link to the current page via email (this can be sent only via the Gmail email account), get to the Zoom function in a way other than tapping on the screen, and get to the Settings menu.
The browser's menu
The browser's history is robust, providing the last 250 sites viewed according to the User Guide. Unfortunately, the browser's history cannot be searched, only scrolled through in chronological order starting with the most recently viewed pages, and folders cannot be created to further organize them. It's possible to open multiple browser pages and select which one to view through the Windows option when the Menu button is pressed, a feature that we really like that is becoming more common in mobile browsers.
Selecting between multiple browser windows
Browser Access (10.0)
For this test, we time how many steps it takes to navigate from the home screen in the unlocked state to navigate to a web page. With the G1's browser shortcut on the home page by default, it's quick to get started and this test is completed in only 4 steps. In order to enter a web page address, the keyboard must be used, and rotating the phone and sliding it open to reveal the keyboard counts as 1 step in this test.
Gaming (4.0)
The G1 does not come with any games out of the box. At the moment, there are some free games available through the Android Market. We downloaded Namco's PacMan game, and found the G1 to be a good medium for this game, particularly given the trackball control and relatively large screen. Games can also make use of the touchscreen for control. The G1 will easily be a device on which you can evade monsters and solve puzzles to kill time.
Namco's Pac-man on the G1
Calculator (5.0)
The G1 comes with a simple calculator with a no-nonsense layout and large virtual buttons that are easy to press. It allows basic arithmetic functions only - for scientific or financial calculation functionality, you'll need to look elsewhere.
The G1's calculator application
Alarm (9.0)
The G1's Alarm Clock application includes 3 alarms out of the box, which can be modified or deleted to your liking. According the User Guide, an unlimited number of additional alarms can be added - this is a drastic and welcome contrast from a phone like the HTC Touch Diamond where the total number of alarms is limited to 3. Different ringtones can be selected for each alarm, and the vibrate mode can be selectively chosen for each one as well. The repeat function offers flexibility to choose the specific days on which the alarm will go off. When an alarm goes off, it can be snoozed or dismissed. The snooze interval is set at 5 minutes and cannot be changed.
The G1's Alarm Clock application
If you use your cell phone as your alarm clock, you'll be happy to know that the G1's alarm will sound even if the phone is off, unlike the iPhone 3G, which must be on for the alarm to work.
Document Software (0.0)
The G1 does not come with any native document viewing or editing software out of the box that can be accessed outside of either of the email applications. In case you're wondering, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents that are attached to email can be viewed in the Gmail email application in an HTML viewer application that resides within that application and is not accessible anywhere else, so we don't award points for this.
Other Software (0.0)
The G1 does not come with any other software out-of-the box that adds significant functionality to the device.
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