A First Look at Google’s New Phone

On 23rd September in New York, Google and T-Mobile took the stage to unveil the first Android cellphone.

Android, of course, is Google’s new cellphone operating system, which over 30 phone companies and carriers have said they’ll adopt. I’ll have a full review when the time comes—I had only a few minutes to try the phone—but here are some first impressions.

Above all, feature-listers will be in heaven. The G1 with Android is clearly intended to be an iPhone knockoff—with all the chronic complaints addressed. Here’s your black slab, touch screen, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, slide your finger to unlock, icons on Home screen, over-the-air downloadable App store and music store, Google Maps, full-screen Web browsing, accelerometer that rotates the screen when you turn the phone 90 degrees, etc.

Yet here are the elements some people miss on the iPhone: a physical keyboard (hidden underneath the screen; you flip it out when necessary). A memory expansion card slot. A removable battery. Voice dialing.

They’ve even added a feature to Google Maps: in Street View (photos of actual locations taken from ground level), you can hold the phone perpendicular to the ground—and as you turn your body, the photo rotates, too, like a photographic compass, so that it matches what you’re seeing with your eyes. It’s amazing and actually useful, especially when you emerge from the subway and have no idea which way you’re facing.

At the same time, the G1 is not an iPhone. More features means more complexity; the G1 has five physical buttons on the face, not one. It’s got a trackball, arrow keys and the touch screen, too. It’s not a multitouch screen, so you lose all those niceties like pinching to zoom in and out. That keyboard and removable battery make the G1 a lot thicker and homelier than the iPhone.

And, of course, it’s not an iPod. It plays music, but doesn’t play video at all [UPDATE: except YouTube videos], let alone capture it, and there’s no way to buy TV shows or movies even if the phone could play them.

Finally, the G1 comes from T-Mobile. You complain about AT&T’s 3G network? T-Mobile’s 3G network covers only 19 cities so far, compared with AT&T’s 280.

But here’s the thing: Android, and the G1, are open. Open, open, open, in ways that would make Steve Jobs cringe. You can unlock this phone after 90 days—that is, use any SIM card from any carrier in it. The operating system is free and open-source, meaning that any company can make changes without consulting or paying Google. The App store is completely open, too; T-Mobile and Google say they won’t censor programs that they don’t approve of, as Apple does with the iPhone store. Yes, even if someone writes a Skype-like program that lets people avoid using up T-Mobile cellular voice minutes.

Android is not as beautiful or engaging as the iPhone’s software, but it’s infinitely superior to Windows Mobile—and it’s open. The Google G1 moible Android is only the first phone to use it, the first of many; it’s going to be an exciting ride.