G1 and Me - A year with Android
So it was roughly a year ago that I ditched my Motorola V360 for the G1. The reason I decided to upgrade was that I had the Motorola for some time and the speaker was going out. People would tell me, your phone has great signal and I would respond with WHAT?! I can’t hear you!
So I decided to jump into Android, why might one ask? Two reasons really:
1. I love Google and use it for pretty much everything.
2. AT&T thought that I needed to pay a $500 security deposit for an iPhone. Also their network blows.
I read a bunch of reviews online and the G1 was getting pretty decent reviews. The biggest complaint seemed to be the battery. I thought to myself, “can it really be that bad?” I of course would find out almost immediately the battery sucked on the phone which to this day is still my largest complaint. After reading these reviews I took the plunge by going to my local T-mo store and buying the last G1 there. In fact a guy walked in as they were getting the last one for myself trying to pick one up. I couldn’t wait to get this baby back to work and start playing with it. The problem was I had to wait roughly a half hour till they actually added a data plan to my service. Once added I entered my Gmail account and away I went.
Things that I immediately loved about Android was how everything synced without hassle. I really liked the fact that I never had to hook my phone up to a computer unless I wanted to drop music on it. I entered my Gmail account and all of my phone numbers and emails I needed were there, ready for use. It also went and got my google calendar, which I hadn’t used as much till getting the phone. I also was happy that this had a physical keyboard. I wasn’t a huge fan (at first) of a soft keyboard that was found on iPhones and other touchscreen phones.
In the first week of having the phone I started to notice what they meant by poor battery. I would learn quickly that I had to keep this baby plugged in all day at work, charge it around 11:00 am, or turn everything off so it would keep a decent charge.
For a good while my Android experience hit a wall. The phone would start to get laggy causing me to either have to delete a ton of stuff or reset the phone to factory defaults. Then it would start acting well again. The music player clearly showed me early on that it was poorly designed along with most of the others in the market. Although Last.FM made a decent player for playing random music, ultimately I found that my iPod works best.
Finally during the summer a nifty tool was released, the one click root, which of course took more than one click. Being able to root my phone allowed access to all sorts of new tools. The biggest was being able to tether my laptop. This wasn’t huge as I don’t need it often, but nice to have. After this soon came my other love for Google and Android, Google Talk. I was lucky enough to be included early into the beta and I’ve written my feelings about it here on Murmur.
After rooting my phone the next step was figuring out what other cool things I could do. Friends and associates had seen on my Facebook how my phones lagginess along with the battery was starting to really piss me off. They then suggested installing a modded version of Android, specifically Cyanogen. Shortly after I rooted came some really easy to install tools to make to move to Cyanogen a breeze. The instructions were about as hard as installing a custom firmware for my PSP, which is also pretty easy.
Cyanogen put a new lease on my G1’s life. It stopped being laggy and started doing what I wanted it to do. The battery wasn’t necessarily better, but at least the phone was opening programs and not hanging up all of the time. I was pretty happy with Cyanogen with the fact that it turned me around on the G1 when it did. The only issue I have with Cyanogen is that sometimes a program crashes. I half expected this since it’s not stock Android and have come to accept it over the alternative of hating my phone. Then Google stepped in and did something very unGoogle. A cease and desist went to the main man behind Cyanogen and like the classy guy that he is, he pulled the project until he could make it work. I then made a last ditch effort to get up to one of the more recent releases before they were lost to the internet ether.
Cyanogen very quickly figured out a way to make everyone happy with the next release. I recently decided to go up to 4.2.1 and have been pretty happy with it so far. It continues to keep a lackluster piece of hardware from being replaced.
Overall in my year with the G1 and Android I would put it simply, Android is awesome and the G1 should NEVER have been the first phone released for it. It’s clear to me that the phone is really something developers were using to develop on when T-Mo came along and decided to make it their flagship phone last year. I would say at this moment Android is still growing and it will continue to get better, the Motorola Droid is proof of that. In fact the Droid is what has me thinking of ditching T-Mobile.
Lately I’ve gone back to my dilemma of wanting to get rid of my phone. The hardware is terrible and I have no plans to get another HTC phone if I can help it. My phone is easily twice as thick as an iPhone, smaller screen, and less battery. Although I don’t know if I want to go to AT&T. Their customer service treated me terribly when I tried to get a phone with them, oh yeah and when I said FU to the guy behind the counter that waited till I almost swiped my card to let me know it was going to be an additional $500 they decided to send me a bill for canceled service along with informing me to send back my iPhone. I like Android enough I wouldn’t mind sticking to another phone with it. The problem now is, do I wait or go with another one that may have slightly better hardware?
