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I’ve owned quite a few Cell Phones & PDAs (computers too) and none of them have topped my new MyTouch G3 with the Android Operating System. And I’ll tell you, it’s the Andoird OS that make it so slick, so if switching to T-Mboile doesn’t work for you, check with your current provider, or wait for the new phone designed by Google to come out.
Gmail
I’m one of those don’t-rock-the-boat kinda guys when it comes to upgrades and such for users that have a hard time learning the new technologies. For some folks, learning the new MS Word could not have been fun (heck, I love playing with the latest and greatest and I still don’t like the latest MS Word!) But when it comes to Email, I rock the boat, and I’ll even sink the ship. Gmail is by far the best email client (web-based or otherwise) IMHO. Nothing else even comes close. Now I know the Blackberry has been doing this (fairly well) for a while now, but Gmail on my Android phone just takes the cake. I finally scrapped outlook for my work email address, and setup Gmail to grab all that for me too. Now I can do it all, from anywhere I have service, and it’s a great user interface.
Applications, applications and more applications!
There are a ton of free (and many commercial) applications for Android. The Market (an application that comes on the phone) connnects you to Google and lets you browse & search them all, and in just a few clicks, install them. There are only a few written by the Google team themselves, and those are all worth a look, so you may not always get what you expect when you try something, but chances are, there’s several other versions of it to try.
My phone will do all of this, for free: (It is of course also a music player, camera, etc… All the standard phone/PDA stuff)
- GPS Navigation
- Metal Detector
- Bubble Level
- Compass
- Flashlight (kinda, but is very useful!)
- GPS Speedometer
- Barcode Scanner
- Color Blindness Tester
- Stopwatch
- Mosquito/Bug Repeller
- Stock Ticker
- URL Monitor
- SSH Client
- and it can do 100s of other things I haven’t tried!
Google Integration
Besides Gmail, the phone is also integrated with some of your other Gmail services:
- Gmail Contacts
- Google Calendar
- Google Finance
- YouTube
- Google Talk
- Did I miss anything?
In all of the above cases your Google Account is used to share the data between Google’s online user-interfaces and the phone. So, if you edit your contacts online, the changes are sync’d to your phone (fairly quickly too.) Add an appointment to your Calendar, set it to remind you with an email, you’ll get it on your phone. Setup your stock portfolios on Google Finance and check them on your phone. Setup playlists, favorites etc. on YouTube, and watch them on your phone. You can also edit any of the above on your phone, and the changes will show up in the respective online version.
I’m sure there will be more of these account-integrated services soon!
The Phone Itself
The phone itself I like a lot. Here’s some points about it:
- The big screen is great, and with 3 desktops (more if you try some other “Home” applications, like FreshFace) there’s plenty of rooms for shortcuts to different apps.
- I’ve been getting great reception on T-Mobile. They don’t have the best network coverage wise, but it’s been good enough for me. I’ve been in some pretty remote places fishing and still had a few bars.
- The 3.1 mega-pixel camera is nice, it’s taken some nice pics, but the lack of a Flash makes it just another camera phone really. You’ll still need your Cannon, Nikon, or whatever brand your using.
- Personally, I have no issues with the touch-screen keyboard. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I’m probably typing close to 20wpm on it. Google’s word-guessing tool is really handy sometimes, turning an 8 letter word into 3 keystrokes sometimes.
- The battery has lasted me a long time, but I keep the Wifi off when not in use or plugged in, and admittedly, I don’t talk on it that much.
- The 4GB of space makes for a lot of room for MP3s. I just copied over a few hundred songs when I got it, don’t think I’ve heard them all yet.
This is, by far, my favorite phone ever!
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