First Call: T-Mobile G1
Added on 2008-10-22 15:41:00
by Marianne Schultz
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 The T-Mobile G1 is finally out - it went on sale today at T-Mobile stores in the U.S. and is priced at $179 with a 2-year contract. The G1 has a 3.2-inch touchscreen with 320 x 480 resolution and a slide-out QWERTY. It also features a 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. The G1 runs the Android operating system developed by Google, and it's currently the only phone available running this OS.
We waited in a short line this morning at a local T-Mobile store to get one (we were in 2nd out of 4 people at the time the store opened) and met an Android developer, a woman purchasing a G1 for her son as a birthday gift, and a Google employee on the Android team while waiting. We'll put the G1 through our thorough testing to see how it does, and our first impressions are relatively favorable overall - it feels good in the hand, if a little too heavy, and the OS is pretty responsive, though not entirely intuitive or refined. We are definitely excited to see the first iteration of a new smartphone platform.
While the G1 has not been marketed as an "iPhone killer" specifically, the comparison inevitably comes to mind, and the iPhone 3G will be among the comparison phones we'll use as we go through our testing, and you'll be able to see the blow-by-blow results in our full review soon.
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First Call: HTC Touch Diamond
Added on 2008-09-12 15:29:00
by Marianne Schultz
 Sprint announced the new HTC Touch Diamond for their network earlier this week and we've got our hands on one and are preparing to review it. This is a slick Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone with the TouchFLO interface. It features a high-res 2.8-inch VGA display, 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.
In hand, the Touch Diamond feels dense and compact - at 4.0" x 2.0" x 0.6" it's shorter and narrower than the iPhone 3G (review), but a bit thicker. The entire front is a smooth and shiny fingerprint magnet, and the screen is vivid and crisp. At first blush, the interface is slower than we'd like, taking enough time to transition to make you think that a screen press didn't register, but we'll see how it does in actual testing. This smartphone has a lot of functionality and we'll cover just about every inch of it in our upcoming review!
The HTC Touch Diamond will be available this month from Sprint for $249.99 with a new 2-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate.
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