Yeah, the wait for October 22 (
or after) is absolutely excruciating; trust us, we know. We'll take every scrap of information and imagery we can to hold us over until
G1s start showing up on doorsteps in a few weeks, but T-Mobile's really gone above and beyond the call of duty here by setting up a surprisingly functional and feature-complete emulator to satisfy our urges to touch icons and click buttons. Obviously, you're not going to get a GPS lock, so don't get your hopes up that you're going to be playing around with Street View or anything wild like that -- in fact, most apps lead you to a "this screen is not fully functional" message -- but it's got more goodies than the Android SDK's emulator, and it's just enough to get you acquainted with the phone's personality by the time it's actually in your paws.
[Via
Cell Phone Signal]
posted Oct 4th 2008 3:10PM
Cool. I finally got a G1 to play with....!!!
G1 is version one of the G-spot. I play with the prototype.
Looks pretty nice!
Awesome.
the backbutton idea is great, though does not bring you back to the main menu (skips that and goes to the background). too bad this phone has that rightside dongle, back should have been an L-trigger or something
It already Froze on me!!!! dammit
Nice. =]
Its like a Toys-R-Us phone... "Someday when you're all grown up you'll get a real phone to play with".
Now if only the real G1 came in this color - I think I'm getting brown.
I agree. It's a toy phone for 5 year olds. I'd hoped they would have put together something useful and innovative. I can't see pulling that out at a business meeting. Everyone will look and you and wonder if you got a Scooby Doo lunch box with it.
Its nice but I dont like how the Back arrow button takes you back to the "HOME" screen.
I wouldve thought if I closed an app I opened from the menu and hit BACK, it would take you back to the opened menu. Instead, it closes the menu and leaves you at the Home screen.
Not trying to pick at it, but its an annoying extra step
This isn't a real emulator, it's possible that the flash file just does that and the real thing doesn't since if people wanted to go back to the home screen, they would press the home button.
When you try to punch out a phone number on the keyboard you can get random numbers when you use the alphabet keys
that is a feature...
the "random numbers" correspond to the alphabet on a normal phone.
you press a b or c and it dials 2, you press d e or f and it dials 3. so when you are dialing "1-800-sex-4you" you can just type in the word part and it will automatically put in the correct numbers
Oh man, you're right! That's excellent. My BlackBerry doesn't do that, so whenever I wanna dial an 800 number with letters in it, I have to mentally picture a standard phone keypad to figure out which numbers I have to dial. Very frustrating. The fact that the G1 solves that problem is huge for me.
ryan,
If you use the "alt" key to dial the letter, a blackberry will automatically figure out what number it corresponds to.
The design keeps growing on me more and more. I almost wrote the phone off from the physical design, but i think it just looks bad in pictures, but good in real life.
CAN'T....STOP....PLAYING!!
What is that glorious silver color with a white keyboard??? Has this model been revealed??? Wasn't it Black, brown, and white?
Love it... silver makes it look really elegant.
I think the OS looks great. Look forward to more devices and some AT&T love.
360 phone tour is amazing... I love the color and am gonna wait for it.
The emulator simply doesn't work. (home button, answer button, keyboard keys won't take u to contacts, browser....etc) Why release it so early? It's bad publicity.
You've gotta click emulator at the top of the page.
Took me a while to figure out too
Did you think I was clicking the buttons on the 360 view??
Of course I'm talking about the Emulator mode. It's not fully functional, esp the physical buttons functions.
This is gonna be one beast of a phone -- though I think that if they make a second gen one it will be even better.
Honestly, though, Apple could take a cue from this -- what a great way to promote a phone -- it would have made me much more susceptable to buying an iphone
they have, to some extent. it's not as interactive, but the iPhone pages at apple.com have had walkthroughs and demos of pretty much all the functionality from the day it was first announced 18 months ago :)
Two things: on the actual G1 it does take you back to exactly where u were before, don't know why it isn't like that in the emulator, probably because it's not totally complete yet.
As to having the dongle on the right - huge f-up in my opinion. When you're using the keyboard, if you have the headphones that come with it or the ExtUSB - 3.5mm adapter, it totally gets in the way and makes it hard to hold the phone and type. I hope AD2P is coming, I love this phone and operating system.
The only way to kind of solve that is to offer the L-shape adapter so the wire doesn't get in the way so much. I hope the adapters they are planning to bundle are L-shaped.
I would really like an iphone on t-mobile.
This is very interesting, I just don't want all of my data sitting on googles servers.
I hope they come up with a standalone app for win and mac to sync directly to my computer.
Then its very enticing.
Your data doesn't have to sit on Google servers. You have the option to turn off the syncing of contacts and calendar with Google. The only thing that sits on google servers is gmail.
Very cool. But it needs to be 100% operational. Releasing only a few options that work is no good.
Hope it gets fixed so we can start playing with it.
Do you mean the emulator should be 100% operational? if so, then I agree. Of course not being able to make calls.
This actually makes my first G1 experience terrible. According to the emulator, G1 enters power saving mode (locked) whenever you press the red hang-up button, even when I'm on the phone. WTF?
And I got stuck when trying to log off from Windows Live...
And that back button frequently stops working for some random reason, and there isn't even a call button on the screen when you are entering numbers...
Alright I know it's just a crappy flash-based lightweight do-nothing-at-all demo emulator, so I'll stop bitching about it. Anyway, there's more Android phones to come, and the real-life performance of G1 is not yet revealed.
LOVE the emulator, too bad I cant get the phone since I'm stuck with the big A double T
That sucks im stuck with a set of A's and double D's
maybe you should look into an early termination. Your fee should be prorated on at&t - find out how much it'll be and then decide if it's worth jumping over to T-Mobile. Since you'd be a new customer - you'd get a better deal. Also you can always call T-Mobile after you find out how much your early termination fee will be and then tell T-Mobile you want to port your # - make sure to mention that you'll be terminating your account early with at&t and ask T-Mob if they can offer you some king of better deal since you'll be coming to them as a new customer. You have nothing to loose by trying.
Well, this emulator is all wrong, the 2 clocks are right!
a dissapointment.
Dear Engadget .. please stop overhyping this thing and overhyping the whole Android platform...
engadget's enthusiasm for android is totally warranted; it's an awesome os/platform. and the g1 is an excellent first implementation of it.
go to gizmodo if it's android bashing you want.
First it was too applish for you trolls now it's too androidish? Make your mind up.
Love it or not, more competition is good for you. You want an Android phone? They're working to make this this thing as awesome as possible. YOu want something else? That something else is being constantly improved and offered at more attractive rates to stay competitive.
You don't want competition? Come here to Canada and get into a contract with one of our cell phone service providers. Then you'll see what a lack of real competition can do for you....(here's a hint, it's not good news).
is the october 22nd release, a world wide release date, well in my case a UK release date also? as i was told by a Tmobile sales assistant that it likely to be december possibly jan, when i asked about it,
can anyone help me out?
the oct 22nd release is definitely for US tmobile only.
The phone is coming out in the UK in sometime in NOV so you guys dont have to wait very long.
well ive went to 2 tmobile dealers and shops today, they both said end the month for the UK, so should everything go to plan were probably looking at the same release as the states, or possibly off by a week or 2, cant wait,
i think i see the 3G icon in the photo...lol...correct me if i am wrong
You're wrong. :]
I think I see one too. I know t-mobile is switching to 3G soon, all the towers are in place (in the US) and last I heard they were planning on having full coverage nation wide by Jan 1st. Maby they will have it up by the release of this, who knows?
i got to play with one in the UK on wednesday, loads of small details (good and bad) you can only appreciate once you've had one for a whole day..
my photos of the event:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshrussell/sets/72157607673661905/
So what did you think of it overall? how about that big "lip" on the right side while typing, does it get in the way? does the OS seem fast? can it run multiple apps at one time?
This is one hideous piece of technology. What a dated disgusting junky looking thing.
I will stick with my HTC Touch Pro thanks.
Thank goodness. Finally I can browse the web via a G1 instead of a crappy maximized web browser on my computer.
Yes, well some of us actually leave our homes. Crazy, I know.
And on a 15" 1024x768 display (my old igloo iMac), it shows up actual size (measured it with a ruler and everything).
Anyone know when the G1 is going to be able to download paid content? Google isn't going to handle Android Market's payment process, so it's apparently up to T-Mobile to make arrangements with developers for revenue sharing - and Android isn't yet part of T-Mobile's devPartner programme...
Good question, I'm not sure how program installs work in android? Is it like .cab files for winmo, .sys files for symbian, .pkg files like osx? If android has a similar program install, and with the great browser that can download files directly from the site, wouldn't a solution maybe that developers can sell their wares directly from their own website? Or maybe a seperate installer program with repos?
You can install APK files (Android Packages), but casual users will want to find paid content easily (eg in Android Market) and buy it easily (eg T-Mobile simply adding the fee to their next phone bill)...
This is not a real emulator. It's a flash demo. It does give you a basic idea of how some apps that are not on the 1.0 SDK emulator (like Gmail) work, but it is not by any means a pixel- or keystroke-perfect emulation of a real T-Mobile G1.
Google redefining terms again (such "beta" word).
Yes, it is not a emulator, just a interactive ads.
Multi-task > Multi-touch
Jailbroken iPhones can multitask, copy/paste, and download from Safari.
It's up to Android developers to write drivers for multitouch support. Would be great.
Is nobody surprised to see that unannounced glorious silver color?
The only reason that the Android platform doesn't have multi-touch now is because of a certain fruit based company having IP on the tech. In one of the launch day videos this is mentioned several times. Now a developer may be able to write something to do it , but I suspect Big A will be down their throat as fast as you can blink. So for all the apple fanboys knocking the g1 for no multi-touch (and yes it is capable of it) you can blame Apple.
Ugh, no Calendar emulation. I want to know how good the calendar is!!!
This is NOT intended to compete with iPhone. I wonder why there is the constant comparison. There is no comparison, really.
iPhone is what it is. It does what it does (i.e. whatever Apple decides). It is meant for people who want no choice and enjoy being fed the cereal their parents give them because it's easy.
Google already has it's services embedded on the iPhone. What Google is doing is stepping outside of that limited area and allowing the rest of us a chance at making our own "iPhone" that does what W want, the way WE like it.
If you don't like this handset. Pick another one with Android on it.
You see...YOUR phone...the way YOU like it. Now you're getting it.