David Pogue: A First Look at Google’s New Phone
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?Today in New York, Google and T-Mobile took the stage to unveil the first Android cellphone.
Android, of course, is Google’s new cellphone operating system, which over 30 phone companies and carriers have said they’ll adopt. I’ll have a full review when the time comes—I had only a few minutes to try the phone—but here are some first impressions.
Above all, feature-listers will be in heaven. The G1 with Android is clearly intended to be an iPhone knockoff—with all the chronic complaints addressed. Here’s your black slab, touch screen, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, slide your finger to unlock, icons on Home screen, over-the-air downloadable App store and music store, Google Maps, full-screen Web browsing, accelerometer that rotates the screen when you turn the phone 90 degrees, etc.
Yet here are the elements some people miss on the iPhone: a physical keyboard (hidden underneath the screen; you flip it out when necessary). A memory expansion card slot. A removable battery. Voice dialing.
They’ve even added a feature to Google Maps: in Street View (photos of actual locations taken from ground level), you can hold the phone perpendicular to the ground—and as you turn your body, the photo rotates, too, like a photographic compass, so that it matches what you’re seeing with your eyes. It’s amazing and actually useful, especially when you emerge from the subway and have no idea which way you’re facing.
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.
- from NYTimes