FIRST LOOKS CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
T-MOBILE G1
A Solid First Try for Google Android The first-ever Google Android smartphone is a respectable initial effort that, given an open development platform, will grow with time. It’s missing a bunch of key features, such as a decent media player and support for corporate e-mail. But the G1, manufactured by HTC, is a quality phone with few bugs. I’m confident that more features are on the way. The 5.6-ounce G1 looks like a grown-up Sidekick. It has a big 3.2-inch, 320-by-480-pixel touch screen that’s bright and responsive. Volume and camera controls are on the sides of the handset, and the 3-megapixel camera is on the back. Slide the screen up to reveal a comfortable little QWERTY keyboard. You get about 60MB of available space for apps and data, as well as a slot for a microSD memory card. A quad-band EDGE, dual-band HSDPA phone (1,700/2,100), the G1 works on T-Mobile’s 2G and 3G networks in the U.S. and on high-speed networks overseas. We achieved 600-to-700-kilobit-per-second speeds in the G1’s browser on the 3G network,
T-Mobile G1 (Google Android Phone) Price: $179.99 with twoyear service contract lllhm
which is fairly typical for a 3G phone. We also connected to our WPA2-secured 802.11g wireless network without a problem. Calls on the G1 sound terrific, at least to the user; the person on the other end may hear background noise. E-mail reads well, but attachment support is poor. As you might expect from a Google phone, the G1 has one of the best Web browsers around. There are holes in the phone’s media capabilities: There’s no video player or video camera, for example. Nonetheless, the G1 is a phone with a bright future that’s worth checking out.—Sascha Segan
PROS First Google Android phone. Connects to Google services. Very good Web browser. Highly configurable. Solid call quality. CONS Poor music and video options. Subpar document support. No Flash support in browser. No Microsoft Exchange e-mail connectivity. Nonstandard headphone jack. For more: go.pcmag .com/tmobileg1
BLACKBERRY PEARL FLIP 8220 (T-MOBILE)
Don’t Flip Yet—This BlackBerry’s Still in Beta A rare misstep for RIM, the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 combines interesting new hardware with software that’s a bit underbaked. Hold off on buying a Flip until there are software revisions to fix the many bugs I encountered on my early review unit. I question the reason for the 8220’s very existence, but RIM execs insist that there are a lot of people out there who won’t buy a phone that doesn’t flip. So the first clamshell BlackBerry device was born. When it’s closed, the Flip is about the size of a BlackBerry Pearl 8120, with a handsome black face and deep red body. There’s a big external screen and a camera on the front, and various buttons and ports on the sides (including the useful BlackBerry mute button). The microSD card slot on the side even accepted the latest 16GB SanDisk card without a problem. The crisp 2.3-inch, 320-by-240-pixel screen and a hybrid SureType keyboard were both a pleasure to use. But in terms of software, my 8220 was so buggy that it felt as if it had been released too soon. On the first call I made from a Bluetooth headset after a cold reboot, when I flipped the phone closed, a garbage message briefly appeared on the external display. When I played music, closed the flip, and hit the up 44 PC MAGAZINE JANUARY 2009
BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 (T-Mobile) $349.99; $149.99 with two-year service contract llhmm
and down volume buttons quickly in sequence, the external display went wacky. And at one point, the external screen clock just vanished—I could bring it back only with a cold reboot. But the biggest problem, by far, was with the Web browser, which struggled with JavaScript and loaded pages at a painfully slow pace. Wi-Fi wasn’t much better. Overall, RIM has built some solid hardware here. But I can’t recommend a phone that’s this buggy until the kinks have been worked out.—SS
PROS Spacious, comfortable keyboard. Excellent camera. HTML e-mail. Six instantmessaging clients. Includes DataViz DocumentsToGo for editing Office documents. Music sounds good. CONS Very buggy. Web browser has serious issues. For more: go.pcmag .com/pearlflip
