David Pogue Takes a Look at the First Android Phone

T-Mobile G1 - Google AndroidOver at his personal blog, New York Times tech columnist and CBS news correspondent David Pogue takes a look at T-Mobile’s G1, the world’s first Android based mobile phone. His overall first impressions seem to be fairly positive, although he does note a few severe shortcomings, compared to the iPhone:

At the same time, the G1 is not an iPhone. More features means more complexity; the G1 has five physical buttons on the face, not one. It’s got a trackball, arrow keys and the touch screen, too. It’s not a multitouch screen, so you lose all those niceties like pinching to zoom in and out. That keyboard and removable battery make the G1 a lot thicker and homelier than the iPhone.

And, of course, it’s not an iPod. It plays music, but doesn’t play video at all [UPDATE: except YouTube videos], let alone capture it, and there’s no way to buy TV shows or movies even if the phone could play them.

But then, it’s completely open and neither Google nor T-Mobile will censor any applications from the built-in application store, apart from the malicious ones. It sounds more like a competitor to Windows Mobile than the iPhone to me, but we’ll have to wait and watch.

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4 Responses to “David Pogue Takes a Look at the First Android Phone”

  1. Looks like someone is jealous! :) (this, taking into account your linked item post as well)

    With that out of the way, Android is definitely the Linux OS of the phone market. And hey, look what we have here! Windows, Mac, and Linux back again competing with each other! :D

  2. jared

  3. guys u should v look at new HTC phone made with google software, kinda interesting stuff. We’ll see if they can do it better than apple…

  4. repask

  5. @repask: This *is* that HTC Touch Google Android phone. And no, its not quite as close as the iPhone.

  6. Milind Alvares

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