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As a 12 year veteran of networking, a 10 year supporter of "the network computer" concept, and (therefore) a huge advocate of high-speed cellular, I have owned virtually every "smartphone" (well, except the iPhone - I don't do Apple and I'll be happy to explain that to anyone who doesn't understand it) ever sold in the US.  So it stands to reason that I would have to have a T-Mobile G1 (aka T-Mobile Google Android phone).  I ordered two G1 phones (one bronze, one black) on October 4th (before the first batch sold out) and T-Mobile promised they would arrive on October 22.  Kudos to T-Mobile!  I received both on October 21!

While I'll be the first to admit the G1 is slightly less than perfect, I defy anyone to say it is anything less than amazing!  It is extremely simple to use and yet it is also extremely quick and powerful.  And the ability to do things like adding shortcuts for almost anything to the extra wide "desktop" (screen) including shortcuts to applications, to direct dial contacts, etc., as well as the innovative applications that enable you to do things like using the camera as a barcode scanner to shop for product reviews and pricing, etc. put this phone in a class by itself.  And the speed and quality of Youtube videos, especially when using a Wi-Fi connection, add a little icing to the cake!  Uh, make that a lot of icing!

As for negatives, NO DTMF TONES (as of 10/27/08) is a HUGE negative!  That means you can't enter your voicemail password when roaming and you can't use automated menus.  I hope they fix that one quick!  Update: the G1 does do DTMF tones.  While in a call, pull up the dialer from the bottom of the screen.  Somehow T-Mobile PDA Support didn't know that.)  And the keyboard leaves a little to be desired.  Like, especially on the silver keyboard (bronze phone) the "alt" menu characters (special characters like +,-,(,*, etc.) are unreadable (too small and not enough contrast) - the black version with black & white keys is much easier to read.  But then, ANY keyboard is a huge advantage over none.  So I guess I'll just have to learn which special character keys are which.  Update: I switched to the black version of the phone - much better!  The other glaringly obvious negative is the absence of Microsoft Exchange support.  And while it is a little inconvenient for a former Windows Mobile/Microsoft Exchange phone user, I tend to think Exchange support was left out deliberately and I'm inclined to support the exclusion.  My logic (and possibly Google's) is, how else are people going to escape the clutches of Microsoft Office unless they have a compelling reason.  The G1 is a compelling reason!

CNET's review (see: HTC Dream T-Mobile G1 Black) rates the G1 as 3.5 stars (out of a possible 5).  Well, if there were other similar products to compare it to, that might be an accurate rating.  But since there is no comparable product, I have to disagree and rate it a 9 out of 10 in spite of the (very) few negatives.  The openness of the Android OS make the possibilities virtually limitless and therefore, the G1 stands alone as the King of smartphones.  And T-Mobile deserves a lot of credit for being the first to bring the first Google Android phone to the world!  Speaking of which, T-Mobile has arguably the best Customer Care of any cellular carrier.  Some carriers (like Sprint), or even other businesses could learn a lot by becoming T-Mobile customers!  I'm sure we can all agree that Sprint's Customer Service is the worst in the industry.  Sadly, if that doesn't change soon it will probably kill them.

(Btw, I have tried setting up my Hosted Exchange Mailbox via both IMAP and POP.  And while I can log in both ways, neither produces my mail.  If someone knows how to make this work, please let me know.  Otherwise, I guess I should be happy using Gmail instead.  After all, it will save me the $20 a month I pay for Exchange mail hosting.  

James E. Felton

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