T-mobile G1
As you may have heard the T-Mobile G1, also known as the first "Google Phone", will be coming to T-mobile on October 22. Since I've been in the market for a new cell phone for quite a while now I'm thinking this may be my next phone. This phone meets all of my must haves (in no particular order):
- EDGE or 3G data
- Wifi
- Music player
- Ability to write applications
- gps
- bluetooth
- 3MP camera
- GSM, and unlockable
And you may be thinking this sounds a lot like the iPhone so why not just get that? Well, I think that it has some notable advantages:
- QWERTY keyboard
- Ability to run applications in the background
- An open platform that allows any applications
And of course it has its downsides at well:
- No 3.5mm headphone jack. This is ridiculous in my opinion. Sure you can use an adapter, but that is inconvenient at best.
- It is on the T-Mobile network. I have nothing against T-Mobile, but I'm currently an AT&T customer. I think each company has advantages/disadvantages but I believe AT&T has a better network and more customers which translates to fewer dropped calls and more free minutes since I have free mobile to mobile calls.
So if the phone is a GSM phone and unlockable (T-Mobile will even unlock it for you after 90 days), why not just buy the phone and use it on AT&T? That should be possible, but you won't get 3G. AT&T and T-Mobile use incompatible 3G technologies (remember 3G simply stands for third generation) so in theory the phone will work, but you will be limited to EDGE.
Am I going to run out and buy this phone on October 22? No, I'm going to wait a bit for the phone to reach the general public. I still have some unanswered questions about the phone, and it is safest to wait for the early adopters to answer those questions for me. Besides there may be other perks to waiting a little to buy the phone.