Hands-On Review: The Google gPhone, Android, and T-Mobile's G1

The first day it was available, I bought the new "Google phone" to see how it works. The gPhone Google's big move into mobile advertising. Because we specialize in online marketing, we have to keep up with Google. I'll experiment with the gPhone to see how this works for marketing. As part of that, I wrote this review of the gPhone.

The Google Phone's Totally Cool Feature

You have to try this. Go to Google Maps. Switch to Street View and select a location, such as the middle of Manhattan or Chicago. Click Menu and select Compass mode.

It now shows you what you see as you move the phone around. Yes, just move the phone to right or left to look around you. Move up to see the sky, look down to see the ground. Sit in your office chair and spin around and the world revolves around you.

Try this with Paris near the Eiffel Tower or on the Champs Elysee. You can look around in Manhattan or Barcelona. Press the arrows in the view to move along the street to see what it looks like.

General Features on the G1

• Screen can be used both sideways and vertical
• Navigation via trackball or touch screen
• Fully QWERTY keyboard
• GPS: You know where you are
• Headphone (stereo) with a mini-USB jack (Bluetooth stereo headphones are coming)
• Connectivity with 3G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, quad-band, EDGE and GSM. It works worldwide (in theory, I haven't tried this yet)
• Black, bronze, and white cover
• Recharge with the recharger or connect via USB cable to a computer or laptop (both are included)
• The phone is tied to your Google account. You use it by logging into your Google account.
• 3.2 megapixel camera

T-Mobile's G1 Service

• The first gPhone is offered through T-Mobile. Most of the large cell phone companies plan to release Google phones in 2009. You can get the G1 phone at T-Mobile stores which are in their 3G coverage area.
• $179 for the G1 phone (in black, white, or bronze), $100 for unlimited calling, $25 for unlimited data, and $35 one-time setup fee. There are cheaper plans, but I use my cellphone for all calls, so I need unlimited service.
• The guys at the Palo Alto T-Mobile store were mellow and honest. ATT/Cingular and Verizon sales critters are usually pushy and clueless.
• T-Mobile offers a 30-day trial period. I used call-forwarding to forward my Verizon phone to the T-Mobile gPhone. Verizon tries to prevent this, so it's a long tedious phone call to their tech support. Luckily, it's easy to turn off call-forwarding (press *73). I'll try the phone for 30 days. If it's generally useable, I'll keep it.

GPhone vs. Treo

T-Mobile's G1 is about the same size as a Treo, but about an ounce lighter. There is no antenna. You slide the top to reveal the keyboard. The bulky right side of the phone gets in the way and makes it difficult to type. The overall design is just okay. The front buttons are too smooth; you have to look to use them. These should be raised dots.

The G1 has a touch screen. Press to select or move items with your finger. There is no stylus and you can only use your finger. You have to use your fingertip, not your fingernail, which makes it sometimes difficult to select items, especially if they are on the edge of the screen. Because it uses fingertips instead of a stylus, the icons must be large., which means fewer items on the screen. Where the Treo can show 22 icons for software, the G1 can only show 16 icons.

The G1 Interface

• You can put up to 16 icons on the desktop. The desktop also has side panels left and right (like wings); you can put 16 more icons on each of the side panels.
• Desktop Folders: Click on Menu, click Add, select Shortcut, select Folder. This adds a folder to your desktop. In the folder, press on the folder's name to rename it. Leave the folder open, open the list of applications, hold down on an application, and drag it into the folder.
• Clock: There is an analog (round) clock. You can't change this to a digital clock. I expect developers will soon offer better clocks.

G1's Features

• Auto Sync: The phone is "always connected" to the web, so it constantly exchanges information with your Google account. There isn't any gPhone "management software" like with most other phones. You just make changes to your Google accounts (Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Notes, etc.) and the changes appear almost instantly (sometimes with a few seconds) in your phone. It also works the other way: update the calendar in your phone and the change appears in your online calendar. Actually, you're accessing your web-based account via the phone.
• Telephone: Along with everything else, it's basically a cell phone. It has the standard features, including conference calls. This was the first time I used stereo earphones with a cell phone. The sound is far better than a mono earphone. You can add ring tones to a phone number. Since you can use any song or record a sound, it's pretty much unlimited.
• Browser: You can open up to eight windows and switch between them. The Apple iPhone browser is easier to use, but this works.
• Music: You plug the phone to your computer via a mini-USB cable. This opens a file browser. You drag songs into the music folder. Click the music icon and the music plays. This is extremely easy to set up and use. The phone has 1 GB of memory. I added 300 songs and still have room for another 600 songs. It's digital music, so the sound quality through the stereo earphones is phenomenal. However, the player has no settings to adjust the tone and so on. It's just a simple player. You can add memory cards up to 16 GB (which lets you store around 16,000 songs). The phone has a small mono speaker, so it doesn't play music very well by itself. I expect there will soon be external third-party speakers. You can't listen to Pandora yet, but I expect there will soon be a Pandora player.
• Photos: The same with photos: just drag your photo collection into the phone's folder. You can also use any photo for the background. It's easy to crop photos and use them as icons.
• Android Market: Software developers can write software for Android and make it available through the Android Market. You browse the list and install whatever you like. Installation is very easy; just click and it installs. For each title, there are ratings and comments from users. Software can also be downloaded directly via the browser. If a company wants to release internal software to only their employees, they can use this. All of this is a big advantage over the Apple iPhone system, which tightly controls distribution.
• Camera: Point and click. Yes, it works and the quality is better than the Treo camera. But it lacks the features of simple digital cameras. It also lacks video, which the Treo has. You can turn off the "Save Photo?" so when you click, it saves the photo. The camera works best in outdoor daylight. There is no flash. It's a 3.2 megapixel camera. It'd be nice if future gPhones had better cameras.
• Bar Code Scanner: This is really cool. Go to a store, pick up a product, use the gPhone to look at the bar code, and see where you can buy it cheaper. You can also read reviews and see ratings. This is the final nightmare for stores. A competitor could tell you that if you go two blocks, you can get it with a 20% discount. Or Amazon will offer one-click instant purchase and shipping. But stores shouldn't worry this week. I scanned a 8-pound box of Orville Redenbacher popcorn. The tool successfully identified it as a video with Ricardo Montalban. Yeah, like, whatever. Maybe this could be improved by using locality: if the phone knows you're in Macys, then it uses Macy's database. But I doubt Macys will allow you to scan their barcodes so you can find their products cheaper elsewhere.
• Ringtones: At T-Mobile, you can download free ringtones and wallpaper, if that worked. At the moment, these aren't yet on the website. No problem; you can select any song and turn it into your ringtone. You can also record your voice (or a sound) as your ringtone. Your girlfriend could say "Hey, it's me! Pick up the phone!"

Future Tools on the Google Phone

The barcode scanner could become a major tool. Whenever you look at a product, you can compare prices, read reviews, see ratings, and get it cheaper somewhere else. If you're in one store and you search, another store could see that you're shopping and offer it cheaper. Whether stores will permit this is another matter.

See a long list of new tools for Android at Google's Android Developer Contest

Google Tools on the gPhone

Since it's Google's phone, all of the Google tools are there, including good ol' Blogger. As a benefit, you can do major editing and writing work on your computer and it shows up in your gPhone. You can manage your calendar, contacts, notes, and so on with any computer. Just log into your Google account.

• Google: It has a Google Search box. It's easier to use this than the browser.
• GMail: Just enter your Google ID and you have access to your GMail.
• Blogger: I was able to post to my blog straightaway.
• Reader: The RSS reader is very buggy. Many of my feeds don't show up at all in the Reader on the gPhone. I expect they'll fix this.
• News: This shows only a few items. It's much easier to read news on a computer screen.
• Contacts: It auto-detects your Contacts list. Well, in theory. So far, most of my contacts are missing. Some groups show up, but others don't. It simply won't add my mom. Anyway, the Contacts is synced both ways between the phone and Google Contacts. But there's a general problem with Contacts: the tool is poorly developed. Google simply hasn't done much with Contacts. I have 350 contacts and it's impossible to do manage these. Basically, it's just one long list. Contacts in the gPhone also has a bug: it only syncs with contacts that have telephone numbers in a standard format. If a contact is entered as 555.488.1234, it won't appear. It requires hyphens (for example, 555-488-1234). There is no tool to search and replace this across 300+ contacts. It's also not possible to export the list and fix it in Excel. This is a good example of the development problems at Google; they all want to work on cool and fun tools for maps. Nobody wants to do tedious, boring stuff like fixing the contacts tool.
• Instant Messaging (using Google Talk): Yep, instant messaging too.
• Maps and Location: When I first turned on the phone, my location was in a 1-mile wide circle. But after a while, the circle began to shrink as the phone figured out my location. Now, it shows my location within a 20-foot circle. I zoom in satellite view to see my house and it can show my location on the deck. Very useful: you'll never ever be lost again. The map also includes directions: enter two addresses and it will show you how to get there. It lacks the ability to remember a list of favorite locations; maybe that will be added. You see all of your Google Maps: satellite, traffic, and street view. Of course, the really cool feature is the Compass view (described at the top of this page).
• Calendar: This is very nice. Your Google Calendar shows up in the gPhone. This syncs with your Google Calendar. I had to copy all of calendar entries from my Treo to Google Calendar. A few months ago, we began using Google Calendar among our team, so we can see each other's schedules.
• Notes: A new item in Google. It's a notepad where you can add notes and store information. It's very easy to copy lots of items into Notes, which are almost immediately available in the gPhone.
• YouTube: Yep, all those funny cat videos are here. You can watch everything on YouTube.
• Picasa: You can put your photo album in Picasa as a private collection and then see the photos via the gPhone. This means you don't have to store the photos on the phone.

Locality on the gPhone

The main thing about the gPhone is locality. This means the phone knows where it is. I live in Palo Alto, but if I'm in Denver or Chicago, the phone knows that I'm in a different city. This is accurate down to about a 20-foot radius. This allows it to show you the weather, wherever you are. You can see the weather forecast for the next few days.

If a phone has locality capability and you tie that to the Google advertising platform, all sorts of advertising, marketing, and sales becomes possible. For example:

• You want to buy the latest book by your favorite author. As you walk by a bookstore, the phone tells you the book is in the store. The bookstore can add a 15% discount if you buy it now. An endless list of products and services is possible. You'll know what is available around you, wherever you are. If my cat needs her annual vaccinations, it can show me available nearby vets which are open.
• You are in Denver and you're looking for dinner. In your restaurant profile, you've added Italian and Thai restaurants as your favorites. It shows you three nearby restaurants, along with walking directions to the restaurants, ratings and comments.
• You're driving along and you need gas. It can show you gas stations, prices, distance, and directions.
• You need a taxi. It can show you nearby taxis and have one of them come to you.
• It can show you available events around you: movies, theater, plays, museums, and places that you want to see. Buy tickets online via your phone, get walking directions, and you're there.

This opens the possibility for a clever type of marketing. For example, I check for gas stations. It shows me a gas station with gasoline at a good price. If I go to the gas station (and for example, I spend five minutes on the gas station's grounds, the phone sends a signal to the gas station, so it knows I came there because of the search and the gas station pays a small fee to the software developer. To encourage people to use this, the developer could deposit a small payment to the user's Paypal account. This is free to the customer; the customer gets the best local price, the gas station gets an additional customer, and the developer gets paid. This could be used for all sorts of products and services.

As for Google ads and marketing: that's an interesting question. If you search in the phone's browser, ads will appear on the side. But with a small screen and if you haven't zoomed out all the way, it's very easy to not see those. Perhaps mobile advertising will be different from ads on desktop computers. Ads on mobile devices might be part of the user experience. For example, when you search for products, you'll use a shopping comparison tool and the companies will pay to be listed or featured. Or when you listen to Pandora, ads will play between every few songs.

Bugs and Problems in the Google Phone

• The calendar is very buggy. It crashes once or twice a day.
• The interface has minor bugs. For example, you can have multiple copies of the same program. Why would anyone want that? The method for adding or removing icons to the desktop is too clever; many users will never figure this out. I've had to show other gPhone users how to do this. The phone should include a video tutorial on how to use it.
• Contacts: This is very buggy. Some names and some groups simply don't show up. It also crashes several times each day. It's fairly useless.
• The cute touch-screen is not good. You must look at the screen as you touch. You can't dial without looking at the screen. Often you touch a button two or three times and nothing happens. You must repeatedly press the button on the screen. It is impossible to dial while driving. It is very difficult to send SMS messages while driving. Ordinary Treo and Blackberry handsets are much better.
• Connection Speed: Yes, the G3 connection promises high speeds. I use DSL for my desk computer and I use Wi-Fi for my laptop. Both are faster than the phone. It can be quite boring to click on a link and wait and wait and wait for it to open. You think before you click. We have a long ways to go for true mobile browsing.
• Offline Work: The goal of Google is to make software available via a browser. But if there is no connection, you have nothing. For example, you're on a coast-to-coast flight. Your co-workers and friends add and change the calendar. You won't see any of this until you get a connection. Google will have to add offline capability to all of their tools, which undermines the idea of web-based software.
• Battery: In theory, the battery should last two days. That's not possible. There are serious problems with the battery. The phone can be fully charged, yet dead within an hour without any use at all. This happens frequently (every other week or so). Sometimes, the phone turns itself on and discharges the battery. It happens so often that I am never certain if the phone will be useable later in the day. The Treo was reliable. Tip: turn down the screen brightness as much as possible. Turn off GPS. Turn off everything that you don't really need. And you end up with an ordinary cell phone.
• Flash: It's odd that Flash isn't supported. Many websites use this. I suppose Adobe will update for this.
• Bluetooth is only for headsets. It'd be nice if you could use Bluetooth keyboards, screens, etc. This would turn the gPhone into a mini-computer that allows you to use Google and other web services. It's nice to use a Bluetooth stereo earphone, but for general phone use, I don't need stereo. I suppose I could cut off one of the earphones. A mono earphone should be available.
• I hope these devices improve. They are a step backwards. The Treo and Blackberry are better.

So, Is this the gPhone?

Actually, there isn't really a gPhone. Here's the story: Google released an open-source OS (operating system) named Android. Any cell phone company (and anyone) can build their own cell phone, download Android for free, and sell the phone as they like. T-Mobile is only the first one (their version is called the T-Mobile G1). A number of companies have projects underway. I expect dozens of Chinese companies will release Android-enabled cell phones in all shapes, sizes, colors, and features. This isn't limited to cell phones. A laptop manufacturer could add Android to the laptop. It could be added to all sorts of devices, including cars, exercise machines, blenders, whatever.

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