Not tethered by the likes of embargoes and bravely challenging the heavy hand of their employer, a T-Mobile employee (Update: They work for a T-Mobile Master Dealer, not corporate) who doubles as a member of the AndroidCommunity forums has posted a user review of the T-Mobile G1.
Fortunately, the giddiness of being one of the first in the world with the G1 didn’t keep “kaziko” from being objective in his review. On the upside, he mentioned that the phone starts up quickly (relative to other HTC handsets), is surprisingly lightweight, has a solid keyboard, and that the call quality and speakerphone volume were satisfactory. On the downside, it “has a big memory leak somewhere” which slows things down until the device is reset, even after which point it “doesn’t run as smoothly as you would think”. He also notes the lack of a virtual keyboard or accessible file system, difficulties getting .mpg and .wmv files to play, and that the handset gets “extremely hot” while charging. (Update: Kaziko has since revised his review – see comments)
To help pacify the barrage of questions that began after folks realized they’d found someone with a G1, Kaziko has also been maintaining a Q&A.
With just under two weeks to go before the first round of pre-orders are fulfilled, expect the reviews to begin pouring in over the next few days.
Ouch.
I think I’d wait for some more reviews before committing to one of these.
I’m waiting for them to put Android on something more like the HTC Touch.
Hopefully something more like the Touch Diamond.
I own a Touch. I don’t think there’s an operating system available that could save it.
The cons I posted in my review have changed. The battery overheating was due to the fact that I wasn’t using the usb charger that came with the G1. The stutter from some programs is because I’m not in a 3G area and I’m using Edge so it has a load time. The memory leak was from a bad application install from the market, I went into a no coverage area while downloading and app and aparently it got corrupt and the Android Test Phone I have did not have error handling for that particular problem and it just leaked memory slowing the phone down… reinstallation of the app solved that problem
Thoughtful of you to have the Q&A Link… but just a point of correction, “Kaziko” is not a T-mobile employee… You may want to read some more on Android Community. Thanks
I read to the point where Kaziko calls himself a T-Mobile employee:
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/17328-post39.html
and
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/17331-post40.html
and continued following the topic later, where he confirmed that his Master Dealer location is more than just an authorized retailer:
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/18867-post49.html
While the semantics of the job title may be debatable, the difference is fairly trivial.
Im not an official Employee for T-Mobile… The company I work for is called MobileTrac or KNBWireless. We are however directly affiliated with T-Mobile
Thanks for the clarification, Kaziko.