Submitted by “The T-Mobile G1 Google smartphone, designed by Google and made by HTC, remains firmly in the shadow of the iPhone-for now. The phone, which goes on sale next week in the US and next month in Britain, was released too early. The HTC hardware and Android OS that powers it lack the polish and depth of even the iPhone 1.0 in most respects. It’s not a bad phone, but the software and hardware needed more time in the oven to bring them to a golden brown crispness.” Full review at Arstechnica.
That review wasn’t all that great tbh. I wish it would have been more indepth.
I really hope the series will improve.
That also seems to be the general consensus on Ars – most of the comments on the article there are along the lines of “was this supposed to be a review of the G1, or an advertisement for the iPhone?”
Edited 2008-10-18 00:32 UTC
anyway, surely htc will update the firmware in a couple of month
No need to wait for HTC, or T-Mobile. I’m sure there are enthusiastic hackers out there right now, downloading the source, poking around, finding things to improve. Google has stated that they will explicitly allow the wholesale replacement of OS components. Don’t like the calendar? Code your own! Address book needs a new feature? Add it!
There are whole communities dedicated to developing “cooked roms” for WinMo devices, particularly HTC ones, so imagine the possibilities with an open source OS!
I can just imagine the quality of apps…
Open Source is great for server side apps. BUT when it comes to desktop the verdict is quite the opposite. Desktop open source applications suck when compared to their closed source breatherns.
So if this is what you are hoping for, then you better get an iPhone or whatever other offering there is.
What people forget is that Apple is so good at what it does because it spends oodles of money on people who watch closely on what users want. They are not techies…
Breatherns? Mooses and mouses and deers, oh my!
If that’s the case, why do people bother using Firefox or Open Office?
Free and Not tied to Microsoft immediately comes to the front. Once used, they show their depth. Firefox and OpenOffice.org are heavily invested by former Netscape/AOL/IBM/Novell/RedHat/, now Google, etc., and SUN is intimately tied with OpenOffice.org.
So far I’m not seeing a start to finish Open Source example that comes from some dude’s garage and now setting the world on fire.
That’s my point.
On the server side completely different story. Open Source on the server is not to be disputed and can easily hold its own.
But on the desktop I just don’t see it.
OpenOffice? Sorry, let’s try this again. I write Excel and spreadsheet applications (.NET integration) day in and day out, that are used to perform mathematical calculations. Whenever I look at Calc I just roll my eyes and think, when will these people become serious.
Firefox? You know I actually used to like it. But ever since very recently Firefox is breaking things. I can’t view youtube video’s anymore. Websites don’t work properly, etc. Yes I still use Firefox, but I use more often than not IE again. Actually this disappoints me a bit because I actually like Firefox.
I am actually for an OpenSource “tax”. Yes free is good and the spirit is good, but people do need to eat…
It’s true there are a lot of open source apps out whose existence very much hinges on the fact that most commercial software doesn’t run on Linux.
But “setting the world on fire” is hardly the metric for success. Actually a lot of the software which has done that is pretty shitty (iTunes, case in point).
Anyway, here are some real (“from some dudes garage”, or at least thats where they started) open source apps that are, in my experience, as strong as any commercial alternatives:
VLC, MPlayer, Gaim (now Pidgin, and also Adium), Audacity, Amarok.
Not to mention classic Unix apps like Emacs and Vi(m).
Firefox I’ll grant you as one of the few desktop apps where Open Source holds its own. OpenOffice’s only strong points is that it’s free and not tied to a proprietary format. I’ve never seen anyone seriously try to argue that Open Office is a superior product to Office 2007. At best you can say it’s good enough for many people (including me).
Not really – even though Google has promised to open-source Android, it has been vague about exactly which components will be open, and (last time I looked) it hasn’t happened yet, though they’re planning to open up before the end of the year.
I’d love to see this happen, and I’m confident Google would have nothing against it. I wonder how much the hardware vendors and carriers will lock the phone down, though.
Android holds a lot of promise, and I hope it will live up to the expectations, but for now I’m a bit sceptical. The OpenMoko guys seem much more committed to openness (practically everything is open right now), but both the hard- and software have quite a way to go before they’re up to par with the state-of-the-art.
We are human, after all
There doesn’t seem much point in getting this particular model if it is the first of many Android phones. This looks to be a case of “come back in a year” as there will be better phones by then and probably better deals. The only deal/tarrif where I live isn’t very attractive; in fact it costs little more to get an iPhone instead which is what most folks will probably do.
Even so, Google do need to get their act together a bit. They need to make it clearer to the consumer what they are all about and what they can be relied on to do (yes, relied on). There was a serious Gmail outage yesterday, for example. There are rumours that Android contains some kind of killbit, which also raise issues about privacy, “phoning home” and the like. And so many of Google’s apps are in beta. That may be fine when they are free, but outages, betas and hanky-panky are not so fine when someone is paying out $$$ for a phone that’s pretty useless unless Google can be relied on to deliver.
Apple are a long way ahead of Google when it comes to setting out a clear offer in the marketplace and showing that it works. Simply saying “Google” isn’t going to cut it these days, in a recession when money is tight and the competition is cut-throat.
So I suspect there is quite a long way to go before Android becomes a really kick-ass platform and Android phones are the phones to have. Google are going to have to fight hard for all this, too. Nokia, Apple and co aren’t just going to sit by and let it happen. But when/if it does happen, I’m sure I’ll be getting an Android phone.
The “killbit” you’re referring to is something from the Google store, and wouldn’t be for anything install outside of that.
Biased or not biased, that was a terrible review.
Poorly written and incomplete, it’s not what I’d come to expect from Ars.
Absolutely. If nothing else, it is far below their usual standards of writing. For example, the first sentence in the review’s conclusion:
“The G1 is a little thin for a launch this late in the smartphone game, as it’s burdened extremely high expectations from all the parties involved, and goes up existing platforms from Nokia, Microsoft, RIM, and Apple that have significantly more polish.”
I’m assuming that should be “as it’s burdened by<> extremely…” and “goes up against existing…”.
That’s sloppier writing than I would expect to see in posts on the Ars forums – much less their featured articles.
I’ve read other not-so-flattering reviews of the G1, and I start to think….meh…not so much. But then I remember the little fact that makes me like the G1 that much more…….it costs about 1/3 of what the overpriced iPhone costs.
That, in and of itself, makes the G1 a worthy buy.
???
iPhone and G1 aside:
Using your logic, buying a junk product is worth the money just because it’s cheaper than a quality products?!
*Üä*
What an ugly attitude to things. I personally like quality products and think that much of the problems of our time stem from the ‘cheap is sexy / eat as much as you can’ mentality of people.
This always neglects the heavy costs of waste disposal and if countries would really live up to the Basel Convention*, industry countries would suffocate in their own waste (instead of shipping it to the poorest people in China, India and Africa).
*) Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal
BTW: not very surprising: the USA is the only industry country that didn’t ratified the contract; they’d rather pay billions to support the auto industry with their outdated 19th century ‘eat as much as you can’ cars..
The review was not of arstechnica’s known quality. It was atrocious, like if it was from a kid’s unknown website.