Okay, so I'm on day three living with my T-Mobile G1 (which replaced my Blackberry Curve) and so I thought it was about time that I give a little review.  I mostly agree with many of the other reviews that I have read online in that the review really has to encompass to completely different things:  the software/operating system and the phone itself.

The Android Operating System

It is very impressive, especially for a first version of the software.  The setup was really easy (once T-Mobile enabled the Google features on my account).  On first setting up the phone, I logged into my Google Account and it automatically set up and synced my Gmail emails, contacts, calendar, etc.  It just worked out of the box.

The touch navigation and flicking and scrolling works great.  The click-hold works nicely and is efficient for a touch interface.  Everything works pretty well for normal use.  The big thing that they NEED to do right away (which I understand is coming in an Android update called Cupcake coming in April hopefully) is having an on screen keyboard.  A few applications have implemented this, but I can't understand why they didn't put this in as a standard operating system feature.  As it is you can't type anything (navigate web pages, etc) unless you open your keybaord and have it in landscape mode.  On the go this is just not convinient... you want to hold the phone upright in one hand and be able to thumb type.  FIX THIS, GOOGLE!!!

The notification interface is sweet... always staying current when anything changes:  new emails, voice mails, missed calls, new RSS articles, new tweets, new Facebook updates, etc.  It shows an icon for them in the top status bar (and makes a little noise also) and then you just flick down the status bar to see them.

The market is great for all kinds of free applications--more on that later.

One very annoying thing is the contact management.  With some help from someone on Twitter I figured out how to import the contacts from my SIM card.  But at this point it doesn't help me a whole lot.  I have THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of contacts in my Gmail account (hey i'm popular!) and so it is nearly impossible for me to find anyone.  I'm sure there's a better way... I just have yet to find it.

The HTC Dream Phone

The phone is pretty good... not great.  The touch screen is usually very responsive.  I have had problems from time to time on small links or when the phone is busy doing other things.  Every once in a while it gets a little slow, but most of the time it's good.  I got an application to Close everything out (it runs lots of background processes) which I run every once in a while and that seems to help.

Lots of people complain about no headphone jack... I don't care about that at this point.  I do wish that it had two USB ports.  My car stereo got stolen, so I am contemplating buying a new one with USB.  The G1 is great in taht you can play music on it either from the SD card for songs you own or streaming from Imeem of Last FM online.  So what would be good is if I could plug it into my stereo, but on a long car trip the battery would die.  So what I'd like to be able to do is plug it into the charger with one USB and the other to the strereo... maybe I can find a way to do this with Bluetooth.

The thing that I dislike the most about it is the keyboard.  I love the fact that this phone has a touch screen, a trackball, AND a keyboard!!  That is what I had been waiting for since I think touchscreen keyboards (which this actually doesn't have yet) to me are only good for typing short messages.  Unfortunately, the keyboard on this one is almost completely flat.  I'd like more raised keys with more travel like my Curve had.  You get used to it... and grow to be able to use it... but so far I haven't grown to love it and doubt I will.

So it's a good phone... but I look forward to future updates to it.

Must Have Applications

One of the first things I did was read reviews and check out different applications to do the things that I need to do with the phone every day.  Here are the non-native apps you can download from the Market that so far I can't live without and use every day...

Twitteroid - Great Twitter client that I am utilizing since I'm still trying to force myself to use Twitter since all the cool geeks are doing it.

Greed - This is a FANTASTIC RSS reader that integrates automatically with your Google Reader account.  I didn't have to set anything up, it just synced my Google Reader feeds.  I tried at first just to use the web browser interface to do the feeds (like I did my Curve), but I did not love it.  Once I used Greed I know I will never go back!

Steel - I replaced the native web browser with this one.  It's just better.  It rotates when you turn the screen (you don't have to open the keyboard).  It adds an on screen keyboard, which is useful until it starts coming native with Android. And I think it's general navigation and display is slightly more intuitive and useful.

Imeem Mobile - Great music player to stream things online.  I've already found a few new artists I like with it and I use it as my walkman when I go out and walk the dog or baby around the neighborhood.  I haven't loaded my music into it yet, but look forward to doing that.  I like it better than LastFM because LastFM couldn't find a Jason Mraz station!

fBook - Good Facebook client.

ConnectBot - For system administrators like me this is a good tool to be able to SSH to your server and fix problems from the road.  Thankfully, I haven't had to use it yet (other than testing) but it gives me comfort just knowing it's there!

CloseEverything - To speed up the phone by closing any open background applications.

Locale - I used this to set up a rule so that when I go to church it knows I am there (from physical location via GPS) and will turn my phone on silent in case I forget!  You can set up all kinds of rules... I think I'm going to set it up to be silent after 10PM also.

Linda File Manager - Best that I have found so far to manage my files.  I haven't messed with it too much yet.  I also have downloaded Astro.  Hoping to be able to set it up to move files to and from my computer over WiFi easily, but haven't tried it yet.

Finance - Gives me a quick update of the stock market and the latest headlines.  It pulls data right from Google Finance including automatically pulling in my Portfolio and Watch List from Google Finance so I didn't have to enter all of the ticker symbols again.  NICE!