Emulator gives you the T-Mobile G1 experience now

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]

[Jash Sayani @ Oct 4th 2008 3:13PM]

Cool. I finally got a G1 to play with....!!!

[epignosis @ Oct 4th 2008 4:29PM]

G1 is version one of the G-spot. I play with the prototype.

[PeterF @ Oct 4th 2008 3:19PM]

Looks pretty nice!

[Hugh @ Oct 4th 2008 3:22PM]

Awesome.

[scape @ Oct 4th 2008 3:25PM]

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

[cub3 @ Oct 4th 2008 3:25PM]

It already Froze on me!!!! dammit

[Evangelion @ Oct 4th 2008 3:26PM]

Nice. =]

[blahblah @ Oct 4th 2008 3:27PM]

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.

[Shenzhov @ Oct 4th 2008 4:56PM]

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.

[zmezyou @ Oct 4th 2008 4:01PM]

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

[PeterF @ Oct 4th 2008 4:47PM]

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.

[Mike @ Oct 4th 2008 3:40PM]

When you try to punch out a phone number on the keyboard you can get random numbers when you use the alphabet keys

[jason @ Oct 4th 2008 3:54PM]

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

[ryaninc @ Oct 4th 2008 6:27PM]

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.

[elefant @ Oct 5th 2008 3:39AM]

ryan,

If you use the "alt" key to dial the letter, a blackberry will automatically figure out what number it corresponds to.

[HalfJoey @ Oct 4th 2008 3:44PM]

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.

[TareX @ Oct 4th 2008 3:52PM]

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.

[G$-off @ Oct 4th 2008 3:53PM]

I think the OS looks great. Look forward to more devices and some AT&T love.

[TareX @ Oct 4th 2008 4:06PM]

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.

[Kip HT @ Oct 6th 2008 8:50AM]

You've gotta click emulator at the top of the page.

Took me a while to figure out too

[TareX @ Oct 6th 2008 8:51AM]

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.

[Pwnge @ Oct 4th 2008 4:24PM]

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

[well weapon @ Oct 5th 2008 5:33AM]

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 :)

[Valicore @ Oct 4th 2008 4:28PM]

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.

[jake @ Oct 4th 2008 6:19PM]

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.

[palnudb @ Oct 4th 2008 4:37PM]

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.

[Maciek @ Oct 4th 2008 10:04PM]

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.

[VGPOP @ Oct 4th 2008 4:43PM]

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.

[HalfJoey @ Oct 4th 2008 4:51PM]

Do you mean the emulator should be 100% operational? if so, then I agree. Of course not being able to make calls.

[nicholaelaw @ Oct 4th 2008 4:54PM]

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.

[Chris @ Oct 4th 2008 5:04PM]

LOVE the emulator, too bad I cant get the phone since I'm stuck with the big A double T

[RiddleMeThis @ Oct 4th 2008 7:00PM]

That sucks im stuck with a set of A's and double D's

[Maciek @ Oct 4th 2008 10:08PM]

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.

[james @ Oct 4th 2008 5:06PM]

Well, this emulator is all wrong, the 2 clocks are right!

a dissapointment.

[MMaster23 @ Oct 4th 2008 5:07PM]

Dear Engadget .. please stop overhyping this thing and overhyping the whole Android platform...

[Edward @ Oct 4th 2008 5:35PM]

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.

[broli @ Oct 4th 2008 5:40PM]

First it was too applish for you trolls now it's too androidish? Make your mind up.

[jorvay @ Oct 6th 2008 10:06AM]

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).

[Mannydas @ Oct 4th 2008 5:11PM]

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?

[projekt84 @ Oct 4th 2008 6:51PM]

the oct 22nd release is definitely for US tmobile only.

[iancdp @ Oct 4th 2008 5:28PM]

The phone is coming out in the UK in sometime in NOV so you guys dont have to wait very long.

[Mannydas @ Oct 5th 2008 6:46PM]

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,

[le Chen @ Oct 4th 2008 7:00PM]

i think i see the 3G icon in the photo...lol...correct me if i am wrong

[Nal @ Oct 4th 2008 9:25PM]

You're wrong. :]

[mikaman @ Oct 5th 2008 3:18AM]

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?

[josh russell @ Oct 4th 2008 7:47PM]

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/

[digitallysick @ Oct 4th 2008 10:20PM]

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?

[Oakman @ Oct 4th 2008 10:01PM]

This is one hideous piece of technology. What a dated disgusting junky looking thing.

I will stick with my HTC Touch Pro thanks.

[Johan S @ Oct 4th 2008 10:46PM]

Thank goodness. Finally I can browse the web via a G1 instead of a crappy maximized web browser on my computer.

[Felix H. Cat @ Oct 5th 2008 6:19AM]

Yes, well some of us actually leave our homes. Crazy, I know.