I ordered one of the Google unlocked developer Android G1  phones mid December. It finally arrived on the day of our office Christmas party so I was able to play with it over the festive period. I’ve yet to do any development for it, so this is a review of the phone itself.

Since this is a developer model I wasn’t expecting any smart packaging, and was therefore not disappointed. None of the packaging theatre of the iPhone, just a pragmatic white box. US-pronged powersupply, but the order form warns of that.

While the handset isn’t that impressive to look at, it sits nicely in your hand and has a good case texture. I much prefer it to the iphone which is too wide and slightly too thin for comfort. I like the slight bend at the bottom. The sliding screen arrangement feels a bit wobbly and even a little bit Heath Robinson (Rube Goldberg for US readers) but it works well enough and the open mode is surprisingly well balanced.

The little keyboard is good as these things go - it works certainly as well as a BlackBerry keyboard and is just soooo much better than only using the iPhone screen keyboard.

The screen is very good, and the heat-sensitive finger tracking as good as anything I’ve used. I do like having hardware green/red buttons as you can operate them with gloves on (important in Scotland in winter) and you can find them without looking, unlike virtual buttons.

The trackball looks a little bit redundant, but I find myself using it more than I’d expected. It is easier to use than the BlackBerry Pearl but I think that’s probably because the ball is slightly stiffer and acceleration is much lower. The ball is a great compliment to using the G1 in landscape, keyboard mode.

Turning down the brightness of the screen gives at least one day of heavy use from a charge, which is acceptable. Charging via USB is ideal for computer workers, although I can see that the power of the software (see next post) means that it would be easy not to lug a laptop about as well.

The GPS is fast and accurate, and the compass very cool.

Phone audio is great and speakerphone is adequate. Bluetooth headset support is excellent, and the Samsung model I use works better on Android than it did with Nokia.

Wifi is great when it connects, but it’s not so good at reconnecting when you walk out and back into a registered Wifi zone. This is a bit of a problem in our house where the kitchen is out of wifi range - be connected, walk down to the kitchen, walk back and the wifi does not reconnect. It is easy to reconnect and it doesn’t get stuck disconnected as I’ve seen some devices.

The camera is small and fuzzy and has no xenon flash. Installing a Market camera app (SnapPhoto) gives much better results.

The most impressive thing,  however, is the sheer performance of the device. I guess this is because it was designed to run Windows Mobile which is a resource hog. The much lighter Android software flies on it like and it is just much, much faster than anything else I’ve used.

So how does it compare to the N95? Well, I’ve cleaned all my personal info off the N95 and put it into the office test pool.

How does it compare to the iPhone? The iPhone sits in my back most of the time unless I’m developing for it.

As my VC friend Sandy says, “Game changing, mate, game changing!”

Well, it’s happened again. My shiny black N95 8GB flicker and died. The screen did a passable impersonation of television form the early 70s and went blank. Power cycling causes a quick vibe, some back lights and then nothing. So it’s either off to repair or swappable for a refurbed device. Still having difficulty decided which to go for.

Some of our more exotic devices are tied to networks other Vodafone who have been taking my money for over 10 years now, so I’ve picked a Sony Ericsson W850i from our test devices to keep me going. It is very light, slim and feels solid. The slider is much better to the touch than the N95 ever was.I’m also intrigued to discover that it has “fitness functions” so I’ll be able to see how many steps I take as I want to and from work.

However the real issue is that it doesn’t have my address book, e-mail settings, apps, Flickr login,  and all the other bits and pieces I use daily. So some painful admin work this evening.

It’ll be interesting to see if the backup restores properly when I get another N95.

I’ve just had some spam from Nokia suggesting I put mobile content onto MOSH. Apart from the fact that it’s a phononym for  the French word for ugly, I don’t see any compelling reason why I should put anything there, or for that matter, visit it either. Last time I looked it was full of scrappy soft porn. And it was difficult to navigate and looked like it was designed for the web rather than mobiles. Unfortunately most of this is true for any content concentrators I’ve looked at, including Widsets and Mippin.

I think the reason is this: there is no theme to the content. You might find something you’re looking for, but then you might not. If you go to Flickr you will almost certainly find the photos you’re looking for (and some that you’re not). If you go to YouTube you’ll get videos that will make you laugh or wince, and if you want blogs, well, there are directories like Technorati. There are plenty of games places. Itunes will give you music downloads, and if you’re in the US so will Amazon.
But MOSH et compagnie are a mush of stuff with no unifying attraction.

I’ve had the Nokia N95 8Gb for a few weeks now, so can properly assess how well it works, and the answer is very well indeed. Of course it still has the over-hierarchical menu system, but it really works tremendously well.

However it’s worth noting that as it arrived from Vodafone it had their “theme” installed which looked like it had been designed by a bunch of untalented three years olds with blunt crayons. The icons were just awful - bad enough for me to consider returning the phone until I found that the Nokia themes were still there.

So what have I noticed in real use?

- The battery lasts several days, even with quite intense use.

- The new, larger screen is great.

- The build quality seems better - it feels more solid, and I think putting the slider flush with the side contributes a lot to that feeling.

- The new camera software is better, but that’s on the version 20 firmware for the N95 V1.

- It’s slightly faster.

- The Wifi works very reliably.

- Integration with Flickr is much smoother - no secret handshakes, just plain log in and snap, it’s setup via some downloaded configuration file. Very slick. Coupled with Vodafone’s new “unlimited” use package this is a great recipe for uploading pics as you go.

- It comes with the complete Spiderman 3 movie on the device. Yup. On board. And it plays very well, although I must admit to having lost interest before the end of the titles. I’d put that down to boring titles, not the package. I’ve not found out how big the file is or how to remove it yet.

- The GPS still takes forever to get a fix, but the maps application comes with all the bells and whistles for free.

So well done guys, more like this please.

The backup of all my contacts, carefully and dutifully maintained, will not load onto the new firmware.

Spit.

The backup utility claims the backup has been restored, but it’s been completely ignored.