Those who were lucky (or unlucky - explained in last paragraph) enough to pre order the G2 over the last week have been receiving their phones a few days before the general public will be allowed to. I am now a proud new owner of my first Android device and I have nothing but praise for this operating system and the strides Google have made since Android was first released on the G1 back in 2008.
Spec-wise, this phone is no slouch. Sporting an 800 MHz Scorpion processor (that is on par with the 1 GHz Snapdragons), 512 MB of RAM, 4GB of ROM, GPS/a-GPS, 3.7" S-LCD screen, z-hinge QWERTY keyboard with dedicated shortcut buttons, 5 MP camera with LED Flash capable of 720p video recording, 1300 mAh battery, 8GB SD Card expandable to 32GB, Vanilla FroYo 2.2, trackpad, 3.5mm headphone jack, and support for HSDPA+, this is sure to keep the tech geeks happy until the next best thing arrives (which should be shortly the way technology moves).
Performance wise, the phone is very snappy and experiences little to no lag even with multiple apps open. The stock web browser is easily the best mobile browser I've ever used. It's remarkably fast (and I haven't even been able to test it on HSDPA+ yet) and renders pages as they would appear on your desktop computer.
The QWERTY will take some time to get used to, especially if you're coming from owning a Blackberry like me. I often times find myself pressing the dedicated "www .com" key when I'm trying to press "A" being that I'm not used to any specialized keys being to the left of the actual alphabet. I'm pretty sure the average user will get used to it as I will. The on-screen keyboard is very accurate as well. The pre-installed Swype application makes on screen typing that much better (especially for those like me who swear by physical keyboards).
Most with complaints about battery life should feel a little at ease. With normal usage (web page browsing, SMS, GChat on all day, phone calls, downloading apps, and a few video calls through fring & Tango which lasted about a minute or so in total), my phone went from 100% to 3% in 10+ hours on its 2nd day. I've read that it takes a good 2-3 full charges for your phone to become optimal, so I'll monitor that and edit here if I find any changes. If 10 hours isn't enough, I'm sure Seidio will concoct a larger cell battery, though I can't find any reason why I myself would need one. Maybe if they can create a 1600 mAh that's the same size as the 1300 mAh... hmm...
Though a little bit on the heavy side, the phone itself seems solidly built and doesn't feel cheap. It's very thin as well, even though it does sport a keyboard underneath the screen.
The 5 MP camera has decent quality. It's clear but, not that clear and the 720p recording can become very shaky if your hands are not that steady to begin with (sort of like the old handycams when you turn the shaky feature off).
Though my view on this phone is overwhelmingly positive, there are only 2 negatives that are plaguing these phones so far:
- Z-hinge doesn't hold the phone in place when held upside down (don't ask why anyone would hold their phone in such a way).
- The phone only seems to have 2GB of ROM instead of the advertised 4GB promised.
The best way to describe the z-hinge issue is by turning the phone upside down and holding it by only the keyboard. Weird position but, the keyboard doesn't seem to lock in place so it will swing loose (some phones swing more than others as evidenced by the youtube videos that have been surfacing). Also, developers have been dumping the phone and finding that the NAND chip seems to have a maximum file size of 2GB. A T-Mobile rep has claimed that the space is merely hidden. An e-mail sent from HTC to an XDA-Developers forum member says that even though the phone hasn't officially released, they are aware of the problem and will be looking into it.
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