I have a friend who's interested in getting a new-generation smartphone that's not the iPhone. I know at least one person here has a Pre (tonyc) and at least one person has a G1 (Dignan). I'd be interested in seeing you two (as well as anyone else who has experience with one or both of them) discuss your experiences. And, please, no iPhone talk.

I'm happy to supply more info about the Pre than I posted in the other thread(s), but can't contribute any useful comparisons to the G1 or any other Android phones.

Perhaps you could tell us what you know about your friend's requirements, what's most important in terms of features, etc. and we can go from there.

I'll be completely honest:

As I tell everyone, my entire life is in Google. I use GMail exclusively, and for dozens of email addresses, both personal and business. I do all my scheduling in Google Calendar. There isn't another mobile platform out there that handles GMail better, and after seeing how my wife's [phone that will remain nameless] handles Google Calendar, I have to say I prefer using the calendar on Android which lets me add events to multiple calendars and set multiple reminders.

All that said: the G1 is a piece of crap. I don't mind the form factor, aside from a lack of headphone jack. The problem is the RAM and CPU. It's horribly slow. I've avoided installing about a half dozen widgets, because this thing simply can't handle it.

To somewhat solve this problem, I have one great app that alleviates some of this issue, called Advanced Task Manager. The app its self allows me to see what's running on the system in terms of open apps and processes, and shut down whichever ones I want. A great recent feature was a 1x1 widget I keep on my main home screen that doesn't nothing but stop all unessential open tasks and processes. The full app even lets me make exceptions to this, for example I made my podcast app an exception so that when I have problems running that app, I can hit that widget and everything but that app will close.

This is the best I've been able to do to make the hardware work for me. I absolutely believe that multi-tasking is not the issue here, it's the out-dated hardware that HTC and TMobile came up with to push this really good platform.

I absolutely recommend Android as a platform, but Google is in serious need of some hardware manufacturers to put out some damn phones! And the Hero/MyTouch 3G (what a terrible name) are essentially the same phones as the G1, except the Hero apparently has more RAM, which I've heard doesn't help all that much.

On the other hand, I did try the Pre out recently, and I must say that the keyboard on that thing is not great. Still, WebOS looks slick as hell, a lot more polished than Android, but I'm not sure I like their hardware either.



In summary: the G1 is a sub-par phone, but the Android platform is completely worth it if you're a Google user. If you need to get a lot done in GMail, I think you'll be more productive on this phone than any other.

I was just looking for general user feedback like Matt provided. I can't think of anything in particular; just general user experience. Do you like it? Is anything particularly outstanding? Does anything drive you batty? Stuff like that.

I was hoping to get a small back-and-forth in regards to "yeah, I have a similar problem" or "nothing like that has cropped up for me".

Having played with both, I'm kinda torn. Pure wow factor definitely goes to the WebOS based Pre. Hardware wise, I liked the keyboard on the G1 better. The new Android phone lacks a physical keyboard, so if that one is an option, definitely look into how people are getting along with the virtual keyboard. I have no idea how close it is to the one on the iPhone.

Both have great webkit based browsers, though the Pre has multitouch for zooming. The browser also seemed to rum smoother then it did on the G1.

I'd be pretty divided if I was trying to decide between the two.

Is the G1 the only Android phone you're thinking of?
By the time I need a new phone perhaps this will have been threshed out a bit.
http://gizmodo.com/5326435/motorola-sholes-android-phone-may-show-up-on-verizon/gallery/

The specs they list there appear to be a match for the G1. They don't mention a CPU speed.


Now that's a nice feature!

I just got a G1 last week and my major complaint is needing an adapter to use the headphones/headset. The ringer also doesn't seem to get very loud. I haven't had time to load extra audio so this might not be an issue.

After I've used the phone for a month I'm going to look into running custom Android builds that enable multi touch and other features.


Also the future Android phones/devices are NICE.
http://gizmodo.com/tag/android
http://www.engadget.com/tag/android

I'm wary of doing that. I'm not sure which ones you're talking about specifically, but the only alternative build I've heard of is putting the Hero ROM on the G1. From what I've heard, the Hero barely has enough power to run HTC's Sense UI (or UE, as they call it), and that it's dog-slow on the G1. I think it's gorgeous, but I quickly decided against it. Plus, I don't think everything is supported yet, like bluetooth.


Really? I'm not a fan of any of the ones I've seen. None of them seem to have any beefier hardware than the G1. The only positive is that there are a couple models that are super cheap to manufacture, resulting in $200 retail prices, meaning that if they get picked up by a carrier here, there's a possibility that they'll be free under a 2-year contract. That would be a fairly big coup for Android in general.

The JesusFreak seems to be very popular. I would start by reading this on the xda-developers forums. I also found info about overclocking the G1 CPU on the forums. I'm going to try running mine at the second from highest speed.



You don't like the Motorola or the Sony Ericsson Xperia x3
I would also love a tablet or netbook running the same os as my phone.

I guess I'm not comfortable with rooting my phone, so that pretty much eliminates that option for me, but I can't tell what that JesusFreak page is about, since there's absolutely no information explaining its self to new visitors.

I wish there were an overclocking solution that didn't require rooting, but that's probably just dreaming. I don't mind the battery drain, as I'm religious about plugging my phone in.


I'd forgotten about the Sony model. That one looks hot, but at the moment there's no telling when the heck that one's coming out, and there's no information about the kind of horsepower it's going to have. I suspect it'll be decent, what with that 8MP camera and handling VGA video, but I don't know for sure.

The Motorola, as I said in a previous post, doesn't look like much more than the Hero, which is supposedly still underpowered. There's no word on the CPU speed, though.