So I've trade my iPhone for a T-Mobile G1. There a few reasons why I even considered this.
First and foremost, I was bored with the iPhone. I know, I couldn't believe it when I first thought it either, but it's true. Yes, my iPhizzy was unlocked and jailbroken, but since I'm not a developer I can't help that they seem to make tons of themes every week and nothing really interesting, App-wise. The App Store apps were great mostly, some retarded, but none the less, after about a year on the iPhone (well two different iPhizzy's) I just lost interest. So a new phone will respark my tech geek side. I'm down for that!
Secondly, I loved my iPhone! It was like my iMac's little cousin riding out for the homies! When something you love doesn't live up to it's potential, its painful to watch. I could no longer sit idly by and wish my SMS thread would load already! I was sick of reading over and over in interwebs forums: "Hahaha! It doesn't even do copy and paste! LOLOLZ!!!11!!" I hated the fact that if someone sent me a picture message (MMS) that I didn't even know until said someone texted asking if I'd received it. I hear it's not much better with ATT service. The add-on MMS apps (one from the App Store and one from Cydia) were clunky and convoluted. The load times on everything were seconds longer than they should be. I know I'm talking seconds, but in tech time, that's light years! I couldn't take the pressure of not updating when Apple released a new firmware because I needed to wait until The iPhone Dev-Team figured out the new unlock. I'm an updater, and an early adopter of everything! So the anxious wait was horrendous, granted they were pretty quick about it but still, I felt pressured knowing the update was out and I couldn't do it!
So I jumped ship last night.
I got my G1 aka the Google phone aka Androidicus King of the Open Software Smart Phones! In the pursuit of full disclosure, I've been a Google fanboy way longer than I've been an Apple fanboy, so I don't feel any pangs of disloyalty. I remember feverishly searching the interwebs for a Gmail invite code, trying every cell phone I could get my hands on to request one from Google (for some reason, in the beginning, this was Google's preferred method of giving them out!) So it was only fitting that I have the Google-est phone on the planet!
Getting the back cover off to insert my SIM card was hard. It didn't seem like I was doing it right but I did it. Powered on. First snag! Albeit a minor one. See, the G1 is a 3G phone and I don't have 3G service from T-Mo. I have the standard ass EDGE. The G1 expects you to insert a 3G SIM so the APN settings are set for that. But the G1 immediately let me change the settings. I simply chose the T-Mo US settings and changed the APN to wap.voicestream.com and BOOM! I was on my way! The interface is nice. It's clean and I like that you can arrange your icons however you choose. The iPhizzy makes them shift to the top in an orderly fashion when you move them, but on the G1 you can place the icons wherever you like, similar to your computer desktop.
You need to slide the screen away to type. I knew that ahead of time, and it's cool. It would be cool to have a virtual keyboard for short little inputs, but remember this phone is open source, so it's all a matter of time. Speaking of, there's no need to jailbreak the G1 because the option is right in settings to allow Non-Android Market apps to be installed. So if Google doesn't approve someone's app you can still install it if you want. That way the dev community is one force! Not two separate ones like with Apple (one for the app store and one for the jailbreakers). I'm liking the physical keyboard. I haven't had one on a phone in a while so it'll take some getting used to. But I'm constantly texting and emailing so I appreciate it.
One thing that totally kicks ass is the Myspace, Facebook, and Twitdroid (for twitter.com) apps. Although they look very similar to the iPhone versions (how different could they really be?) there's one huge advantage on the G1. You can set them to tell you when you get messages. I know it sounds simple right? When you leave the app, you will get a notification when someone sends you a message. No, I'm not cluttering up my gmail with those notifications, it just tells me as if I was getting a text message. They each let you select what you'd like to be notified of, and at what frequency you'd like the app to check. You could NOT do this on the iPhone.
The camera is better than the iPhone's too. The iPhizzy has a 2 MP cam, and the G1 has a 3 MP cam. The G1 has removable storage and a removable battery. I haven't really done too much investigating as I just got it last night, but for right now, I'm happy with my decision. If I change my mind, I'll just sell the G1 and hop back on the iPhone thing.
