thoughts on the g1

for some (crazy) reason, i decided to try out the g1 after reading gina’s article and finding a good deal on craigslist. the summary is - i think i am going to sell it and keep my iphone :)

thoughts so far:

• it’s nice to have a keyboard - but something doesn’t feel right about it. i can’t quite put my hands on it yet.

• no arabic fonts in the browser, and no arabization!! :( iphone doesn’t have it either, but third party solutions (iphone islam) exist that work very well.

• touch screen isn’t multi touch. also, you have to press with your finger (not the finger tip) - pressing with the finger tip is useless.

• gmail app totally rocks

• integration with google (for gmail and calendar) rocks

• integration with contacts is HORRIBLE. seriously. gmail, as you may know, makes a contact for every person you email. so if you sync your contacts as is with the phone, you’re looking at a ridiculous set of contacts. moreover, if you use the built in google syncing within address book, your address book gets sullied with all these random contacts, duplicates, etc. not very cool. i worked around this by using ab2csv exporter, exporting a csv, and importing it into google contacts under a specific group, then only syncing that group with the phone.

• one odd caveat - you have to use the supplied usb cable to connect the hone to the pc and be able to mount the micro sd card. using any normal cable you may have (from a camera, for example) will charge the phone, but won’t work for mounting the micro sd card. took me a while to figure this out.

i upgraded the firmware, but haven’t played with google latitude yet (nor with the gps).

i may play with it some more, but at the time being, i am thinking of selling this and sticking with my iphone, as it feels a lot more polished. there are definitely some nice things about it that are missing from the iphone - gears, the fact it runs linux, development seems to be easier (java based), cut and paste, better camera, built in voice dialer, etc. but the iphone feels a lot more polished.

update - “compare everywhere” app rocks - iphone has an equivalent (snaptell, and the amazon app is good too), but it doesn’t scan barcodes. the english to arabic dictionary actually renders proper shaped arabic. apparently, some people have gotten arabic (the font and shaping) to work (though i am not sure if it’s throughout all the apps or not). they haven’t documented it all yet but should soon. i doubt it’ll be to the extent that arabization is done on the iphone, however. battery life is sup-par - went from 100% to 82% in a few minutes by installing and trying a handful of apps.

summary - iphone (even the first gen) still wins.