T-Mobile G1

[smog monster]

My contracts up the end of the month and was looking at the T-Mobile G1 the other day , looks like a good phone but dunno if i would use all the stuff on it . I have been with T-Mobile for years (since it was one2one) and they are offering me a cracking deal on the G1 free phone £25 a month (18 mth contract) unlimited text / internet and 800mins

Other phone i liked the look of was the Sony 905

Looked at the I-phone but dont like it :(

Help me pick a good phone :confused:

[Joff]

You could always sell the handset on.. not sure what the others are fetching on eBay but the G1 seems to get £200-300 depending on whether it's locked or not.

[Decron]

Don't touch the 905 with a 12ft barge pole. It will break and you will not get it repaired within 3 weeks

[Phil-E]

Don't touch the 905 with a 12ft barge pole. It will break and you will not get it repaired within 3 weeks

Agreed! There have been lots of problems with this handset!

The G1 on the other hand is a cracking phone and have really enjoyed using mine!

Not sure what phone you have at the moment but it isn't like a normal phone and as long as you don't mind only just manging to squeeze 2 day out of the battery (or one day with moderate to heavy use) then its great.

They have just released a software update which is slowly filling in the gaps that they left out on release (no onscreen keyboard at the moment!)

And that is a cracking deal they have offered.

I am paying £30 per month with £130 of allowance and free internetz.

The phone is quite heavily internet reliant and keeps all your contacts synced with google servers etc.

When I went to australia recently it was a matter of disabling the internet all together because it is always on and even if you have everything disabled it WILL use the internet (something to think about if you go away a lot!)

Ruku and Wardy have got one too (but not sure if wardy has his unlocked yet

Phil

[fattybacon]

In addition to what philje_123 says, it all depends on what sort of Google user you are. I'm in for the lot, heavy user of mail, calendar, groups, maps, docs and reader, plus some other stuff! It's a dream phone for me, but I'm too tight to pay for all data it uses.

Battery life is no worse than the iPhone and the camera is far superior.

[Phil-E]

Battery life is no worse than the iPhone and the camera is far superior.

It is slightly worse but improving (been mostly down to the way the OS uses the power etc) and yes the camera is pretty good actually (if you keep very still :P)

Agree on your other point. If you don't really use google mail, calendar etc then its a bit faffy as I don't think there's any way to sync with outlook etc yet.

It's nice to know that my contacts and everything are backed up all the time. There were times with windows mobile phones that I went months without backups!

Phil

[fattybacon]

Agree on your other point. If you don't really use google mail, calendar etc then its a bit faffy as I don't think there's any way to sync with outlook etc yet.

Google have their Outlook to Google Calendar sync (which also does contacts), so maybe you could do a three way sync.

Outlook <-> Google Calendar <-> G1

Google Calendar Sync

[Wardy]

To the earlier question, yes I got it unlocked as soon as I got it (two weeks last Monday) and with a bit of fiddling, it's now up and running on O2

It's a great phone and I'm very pleased with it, having traditionally been a Nokia user. But I feel that if you feel you don't particularly have a need for internet and email on the move, it might be a bit of a pointless acquisition.

What else is on offer?

Steve

[Phil-E]

To the earlier question, yes I got it unlocked as soon as I got it (two weeks last Monday) and with a bit of fiddling, it's now up and running on O2

Hi steve. Have you recieved the new UK update with you not being on t-mob?

Check the software version in the device info it should say RC9 somewhere.

Are you able to access all the google services then?

Phil

[Joff]

To the earlier question, yes I got it unlocked as soon as I got it (two weeks last Monday) and with a bit of fiddling, it's now up and running on O2

I'm considering getting one to unlock and use on Orange, but I hear that you then can't use Android market for apps? Any truth to that?

[roo]

Another choice would be the HTC Magic. It is out on Vodafone next month and is also uses android. It does not have the flip out keyboard and is fullyt ouch screen.

As HTC also make the G1 it should be just as reliable.

Don't know what the deals for it will be though.

[fattybacon]

Another choice would be the HTC Magic. It is out on Vodafone next month and is also uses android. It does not have the flip out keyboard and is fullyt ouch screen.

As HTC also make the G1 it should be just as reliable.

Don't know what the deals for it will be though.

Vodafone have got a bad habit of disabling about any function that prevents them making more money.

In the past I've had Sony Ericson phones and the voda version had the email client removed everytime - so you'd MMS rather than take a pic and email it to many people.

I'm watching what they do with the 'G2' with interest since t-mobile are preventing people use Google Latitude only in the UK.

[Phil-E]

I think you can still access the market on an un-locked phone. Although not sure how it would work with the paid apps that have just been released today!

Phil

[Wardy]

Yes I see the G2 is due out on Voda - release sometime next month? Don't like the fact they've ditched a proper keyboard though.

In answer to the other questions, yes it's all working well. Yes I received the v1.1 RC9 update OTA last week Phil, and the Market works fine and I've downloaded the usual bits and pieces of free useful software that's available without problem

Apart from fiddling for maybe 30mins on and off to try and get initial settings for O2 onto the device, so the phone could register and hook upto my Gmail account it's working like OEM

Cheers,

Steve

[Phil-E]

it's working like OEM

Cheers,

Steve

Jolly Good!

So... you gonna mod or not? That is the question! hehe

[Wardy]

You give me the pros and cons and I'll consider it

Can I mod to get decent battery life though? That is the question

Steve

[Phil-E]

You give me the pros and cons and I'll consider it

Can I mod to get decent battery life though? That is the question

Steve

Pros:

Task manager app

Wifi tether (use phone as 3g wifi router)

Store apps on SD card

Auto rotate and multitouch browser

Enable latitude

Custom boot images

Cons:

errrr... you have to wait an extra couple of hours for updates and install from the SD (no OTA updates)

And there is a mod you can do to inprove battery life.... stop using the phone! hehe

Phil

[smog monster]

Been into T-Mobile today to have another look at the G1 , guy there says i can have it for 7 x days trial & return it if i dont like it for an exhange to a different phone .

[roo]

I bit the bullet today and got one. I was going to wait until my orange contract was up, but I hate my phone so much I've brought it out. The money I can get for the phone should cover most of the cost anyway.

Just a shame that it won't connect to register my account just yet.

[Wardy]

Jeff - so you're trying to use it on Orange? Obviously you'll need to unlock it. I found a reliable service for £15 that provided the unlock code immediately. Then you need to go in and amend the APN network settings, in order for it to grab a connection on Orange. This basically entails entering some Orange WAP settings, so it can get a basic connection. It took me a little while to get the right O2 details in there, but it is possible

Give me a shout if you're having problems, or want details or who I used for unlocking.

Steve

[Phil-E]

So you did you start from scratch steve and did you have to bypass the google account activation or activate over wifi in order to get in and change the setting for the APN?

So what do you think of the pros and cons? Couldn't really think of many cons tbh.

Not even sure if it invalidates warranty but it can be put back to how it was.

Phil

[Wardy]

No, you don't bypass account activation. The G1 requires a Gmail account to be setup before anything can be used, which is fine by me as that's my main account these days. So the phone needed to connect with Gmail servers in order to start up and complete the initial setup. It does this by using basic WAP settings. Now normally these are pre-configured as it would be used on T-Mobile.

So holding down menu during setup allows an option for APN editing. So I took all the T-Mobile entries out and had to have a few attempts at putting an O2 profile together, before setup would complete and I could properly start to use the phone.

Steve

[Phil-E]

Ah right.

Im suprised they (T-mobile) allowed that feature as it's obviously there if you're on a different network to use a different APN.

Glad you got it running ok though and hope you are enjoying it as much as I am! Have you bought any apps since the paid ones became available?

Phil

[roo]

Jeff - so you're trying to use it on Orange?

No, I paid up the last 2 months of my orange contract and signed with t-mobile. Just waiting on the pac code to transfer the number over.

[Phil-E]

Think there is a way round to get the phone to activate over wifi so you can start having a play with it but think its a bit complicated and requires that you have a certain firmware and some pc software to send some commands over to the phone etc so probably just easier to wait!

Phil