September 23rd, 2008
T-Mobile G1: Specs, pricing breakdown
With all of the hooplah surrounding T-Mobile’s announcement of the G1, I thought it useful to lay out the details of the phone:
T-Mobile G1
Fact: First phone using Google Android platform
Looks like: A Sidekick
Price: $179
Manufacturer: HTC of Taiwan
Service: T-Mobile (SIM-locked)
Network: both high-speed 3G networks and older cellular networks, as well as Wi-Fi.
Availability: Oct. 22 (U.S.); early November (U.K.); early next year (Europe). T-Mobile customers can order now from the website and receive the unit when it hits store shelves in October. Available outside T-Mobile’s 3G markets, which expand to 22 by the end of the year.
Hardware: Large color touch screen that slides out to expose a full keyboard; a 3-megapixel camera that does not zoom nor shoot video. Accelerometer.
Software: Internet browser (”Chrome lite”) with easy access to many of Google’s services, including search, Gmail and YouTube.
More Features: GPS navigation and Bluetooth connections. Drag and drop with finger. “Clicks” and “long presses” with finger; left and right finger “swipe” allows access to the full “desktop.” Music player with “related songs” support. Notifications. One-click hyperlinks for Google map (with Street View support). “Compass mode” shows a screen that moves with you. Dedicated search button on keyboard.
Battery Life: Five hours of talk time and 130 hours of standby time.
Third party development: Several applications come preloaded on the phone, but the G1 is designed to encourage third-party developers to create programs to run on it. (See below, “Android Market”)
Primary aim: Consumers and families
App Store: “Android Market,” with access to Amazon.com’s MP3 store preloaded on the device. Apps featured at launch: Ecorio, which tracks your carbon footprint; ShopSavvy, which turns the G1 into a barcode scanner and lets you compare product pricing online. Apps also available at launch: Enkin, which visualizes map info on your camera’s visual; Locale, which lets you define your most frequented places on a map and set your phone to respond to those places (example: switching to silent when you’re in the office or at a movie theater); GeoLife, a location-aware to-do list; Cab4Me, which lets you order a cab from where you are (and find where cabs frequently travel); BioWallet, which uses the camera as an iris scanner for security; CompareEverywhere and GoCart, which are similar to ShopSavvy; TuneWiki, which grabs art and info for your music; and TeraDesk e-Storage, which integrates with Google Docs.
Plans: The $179 price in the U.S. requires a two-year voice and data plan (in other words, $20 cheaper than the iPhone). Data plans come in two flavors: $25 and $35 a month (the former with unlimited data, the latter with unlimited data and messaging). Pricing for Europe still unknown.
Support: Will read Microsoft Word, Excel files; Adobe PDF. No Microsoft Exchange compatibility at this time. Gmail push, IMAP pull system. No QuickTime or Flash support at launch. Google Talk support. Supports DRM-free music, but not iTunes encoded music. Dual-band UMTS, quad-band GSM.
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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