Last October, we would've never guessed that T-Mobile would bother to circle back with HTC on the
myTouch 3G to craft a slightly modified version that fixes everyone's single biggest complaint -- the lack of an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack -- but here we are now in January with that very product resting in our hands. Even crazier, though, is that the only version of the modified phone (or, at least, the only version announced so far) is a limited edition tie-up with Fender and pitchman Eric Clapton. Strange bedfellows, indeed -- maybe just strange enough to work. Seriously, who doesn't want a phone endorsed by one of the hippest, most storied brands of the 20th century?
Enter the
myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition, a phone that takes the classic myTouch 3G formula, tacks a 3.5mm headphone jack along the upper right edge, coats the shell in faux sunburst fiddleback maple (just like that Buddy Holly or SRV Strat you've always wanted), and tosses in a few custom accessories and apps you don't get with the standard version.
Physically, the phone looks far, far better in person than you might picture in your head after having it described to you. This isn't some 99-cent applique we're talking about here -- the fake wood that's covering this thing could easily fool someone who isn't... you know, a wood "expert," if only it didn't seem too far-fetched to use real tree pieces on a consumer-grade phone. Both the wall adapter (which shares its styled shape with the standard myTouch) and the headphones also enjoy the treatment, and they all look great. No, seriously, we're not messing around.
Fender clearly took the partnership seriously, too -- it's not just the wood, but everything about the package from the zippered case with a pick-shaped logo to the crushed velvet pouch has an awesome, chic, high-quality feel. Honestly, we'd probably carefully remove the phone itself and zipper everything else back up and put it away as though it was a treasured collectors' item, but anyone who plays an electric guitar understands the awesomeness of the inside of a Fender case; if you're the kind of person who never leaves home without a six-string, we can see why you might want to carry the pouch around, too. It's silly, but it's fun and makes for a great conversation piece.
Once you turn the phone on, you'll notice that you're right back into familiar myTouch territory with a few key differences. As the Fender name indicates, everything that has changed with this version is music-oriented, starting with the jack and leading through to the bundled apps; T-Mobile has (wisely) swapped out Android's default music player and replaced it with HTC's, for example. It's the same one you find on the
Hero, and apart from graphic transitions being a little laggy, it works very well and looks a whole heck of a lot better than anything Google has done so far.
Musicians (particularly guitarists, we suspect) will appreciate the handset's Musical app, which serves as an umbrella for a handful of tools. It's got a metronome, tone generator, and tuner -- all handy for impromptu gigging on the road -- along with keyboard and percussion instruments that can be manipulated on-screen. Make no mistake, the instruments are purely novelties -- the screen's way too small to effectively use a keyboard, and even if it were, the lack of multitouch makes chords impossible. Interestingly, the app can be used as a MIDI controller over WiFi, a surprisingly pro-level feature for an app that doesn't have much practical purpose. Don't get us wrong, it's fun to dink around with and we'd bet it's great for parties or a quick game of Name That Tune, just don't expect to record your next masterpiece with it.
Next up is Solo Lite, a stripped-down version of a guitar app that any Android user can find in the Market (for free, no less, so existing myTouch owners shouldn't feel ripped off here). It sounds surprisingly good and can be configured to play the chords of your choosing, but as with Musical, we don't see how this is of too much practical use. It's cute, it's fun, and you shouldn't expect much more.
Unfortunately, both Musical and Solo suffer from some pretty extreme lag, symptoms of the myTouch's anemic 528MHz core. We're guessing they'd fly on a Snapdragon, but the apps tax this poor, outmatched processor to its frayed limits. The rest of the phone works every bit as well as a regular myTouch, but these apps seem to really be designed for something with a little more "oomph."
So, let's take a quick look at the Fender's other big deal: that 3.5mm headphone jack. We wish we could be a little more excited about this, but HTC seems to have rushed this one -- it obviously shoehorned the jack into a device that wasn't designed from the start to support it. The placement of the jack is totally fine, but we experienced far more hiss while listening to music than we've grown used to with recent music-capable phones; by and large, manufacturers seem to have gotten the hang of noise suppression, and the myTouch is a marked step backwards. Granted, we were using Shure SE530s for the test -- earbuds that are honest enough to make almost anything sound like crap -- but when you put it head-to-head with nearly any other modern phone with a jack, this one's going to come out on bottom.
Wrap-up
Look: it's a Fender-branded myTouch 3G. Existing myTouch owners really shouldn't feel bad about the inclusion of this afterthought of a 3.5mm jack, and fresh customers looking to get into an Android set on T-Mobile clearly have better choices in the range (and there'll be far, far more over the course of 2010, we suspect). That said, there's something about the Fender branding and the exquisitely-crafted details that tugs at our heartstrings here, and honestly, we might carry this one around just for the cool factor. And who knows -- when you become the next Jimi Hendrix, maybe it'll be worth something to someone some day.
posted January 29th 2010 1:45PM
So.. This is what a polished turd looks like...
@geekthree
Oh, and I mean that in the aesthetic sense (read: Not talking about how good a phone is.. simply that it looks like a turd thats been polished now)
@Banksta3 your post made me lol
Now announcing the Gibson Iphone! Made of pure mahogany and is 20x times the price of a normal phone. Also you can't answer calls, it just keeps ringing.
@geekthree
Hmm.. downranked..
Since I clarified I wasn't talking about the phone (quite the fan of Android btw) just the design, I can only assume people actually like the look of this...
Do you people also happen to like Internet Explorer 6?
@geekthree
That shit looks good, man.
Exactly... Getting tired of these so so phones... That we are suppose to gawp at and lust over... Pathetic!!!!
@NeoSeer
Gawp? Gawp! Gawp gawp GAWP!
I know different people have different needs, but is the myTouch a good phone in general?
@lainofthewired Maybe when it was when it was launched, but there are far superior android phones available at the moment (read: Nexus One), and there are sure to be better ones coming out in 2010.
Unless you NEED a Fender branded, wood paneled phone, I would look elsewhere.
As far is android phones (and smartphones in general) go, its average. It doesnt stand out for being particularly great or terrible.
In the grand spectrum that is all phone available today, its still clearly one of the better phones. This is coming from someone who owns one btw..
@lainofthewired
If all you want is an Android handset, and not the awesome that is a Droid/Nexus/Whatever is coming next, then yeah, the myTouch is a good phone. It just doesn't have the fast processor like the higher end phones do and therefore you get the lag. It is also still at 1.6 IIRC. I think its supposed to be getting 2.x, but I have no clue as to when.
@lainofthewired This limited edition, features a new sunburst finish inspired by Fender guitars as well as a number of enhancements centered around, not surprisingly, music. .. Information: http://bit.ly/mytouch-3g-fender-leaked
lame
@00iEye00
milkshake
@goatlover
brings all the girls to the yard?
Is there a special compartment for heroin?
@Marbles the 3.5mm jack
@Marbles
heroin...no
Cocaaaaaine!
@tchan012 Oops, I was thinking of the Lou Reed Special Edition Palm Pixi due out soon.
@Marbles
I'm still waiting for The Who HD2 collection. That should have an interesting amount of "substances" in there.
This phone is also known as the "Finless Brown".
As long as you can afford to ditch some hipster cred (you probably can) then you'd be better off with a Nexus One.
This looks good but they chose the wrong guitar app to bundle. Should have went with RockOut. It's way better.
bullshit
I have no idea why they decided to do this with the MyTouch 3G. Maybe people would buy this if it was a Fender branded Nexus One.
FAIL!
@Matt l : Same reason Lamborghini does special SV editions only on the very last year of a product model before it's due to go out to pasture... they add some bells and whistles, a touch of extra oomph, label it "special edition", and they boost sales that otherwise would be gobbled up by newer products - like the Nexus One you mentioned.
If you did a special edition Nexus One, you'd steal even MORE sales away from the MyTouch. That's the exact opposite of what they want.
The goal here is to add enough extra appeal to keep the MyTouch viable to enough customers that they'll still have sales, due to the fact that they now HAVE a Nexus One. Not everyone knows or cares about what little extra (power, features, or OS rev) the Nexus One has.
@Matt l
But then it would be $999
coats the shell in faux sunburst fiddleback maple (just like that Buddy Holly or SRV Strat you've always wanted),
Uhhh...what? Why the hell did they use a bookmatched flame maple top on this? SRV and Buddy Holly did NOT play Fender guitars with bookmatched flame maple tops (that kind of thing typically goes on a Gibson). SRV's guitar was Alder, Buddy Holly's was probably Alder as well.
@LocustPlague
lol, didn't even notice that.
@LocustPlague
I do agree with you about the SRV and Holly strats not having the flame maple tops. Although like you said it is more common on Gibsons, and I'll throw PRS in there, Fender does use Bookmatched Flame Maple tops on some of their Custom Shop guitars.
@flanders I will agree with the PRS statement as well. I tend to think of guitars primarily in the 50's/60's eras, as opposed to anything that was created after I was born, so I left those out.
Yes, Fender does use the maple tops on some guitars, but these are few and far between and it was NEVER done on the classics.
Fender and Gibson were basically two companies providing the same product with totally different manufacturing concepts in mind. Gibson's guitars were much more difficult to make (carved tops, angled necks, glued neck joints, angled headstocks, etc. etc) whereas Fender focused on being as economical as possible (their guitars were built using cheap wood like alder and ash, the necks are joined parallel to the top, screwed on, etc. etc. etc.).
I think Fender uses figured maple on some of their amps. That's what I assumed they were alluding to.
@Rocknr66 I haven't seen any fender amps that weren't covered. The tweed amps were covered in yellow-ish tweed, the rest are typically in a black tolex...any model numbers with figured maple?
@Rocknr66
I know you could get Mesa amps with Flame Maple, but I'm fairly positive that any Fender Amps with a Flame Cabinet would be extremely Limited Edition and exclusively from the Custom Shop.
@LocustPlague
Agreed
@flanders
You're probably right. I thought I remembered either a Blues Jr. or a Deluxe with that same finish. I am a very devout Gibson/Marshall guy so it's kind of foreign soil. I think we all agree flamet maple does not exactly scream Fender. I guess they needed a way to make it look more like wood and less like a brown phone.
While I have no opinion on the phone itself, as I've never seen one in person, let alone touched it, I think it LOOKS very cool. I saw the commercial last night for the first time with Clapton and thought how nice it looks. I might check out a skin for my iPhone that looks like that even.
Oh lovely, a nice little gadget to be a physical reminder of when Eric Clapton sold out.
And did they need Buddy Guy's permission to use his name? If so, I'm a little disappointed in him as well.
@JoshUng
Wow, Clapton and all other musicians should never make money? Chill out, let him get some coin for this. He does have and contribute to his charity (Crossroads Center, or Centre, he's British) which helps people fight substance abuse problems.
@flanders Well, I'm not really that mad, but I always get a little sad when a legend schills for some company. I suppose if the money went to his charity, thats okay (of course, I think its a good idea to plaster your charity name somewhere in the commercial).
I am still reeling from the Bob Dylan/Pepsi commercial though. Not because Dylan was selling his music to Pepsi, but because they paired him up with Will.I.Am, that was a shot to the guy.
@JoshUng
Agreed, there is a balance to be struck. However, I believe Dylan tried to excuse his actions after that happened. I believe I found a quote from the press release, he said:
Fah foo fah, hasoo wah bulalu da nevanuner.
garbage.
In case anybody is wondering, it's absolutely certain that the regular MyTouch phones are getting the 3.5mm upgrade next month. There have been multiple in-the-wild shots showing them, so it's a done deal.
@Chefgon
Also, this phone (and presumably the 3.5mm equipped MyTouch launching next month) has received a minor spec bump, in the form of 256MB of RAM. The original had 197MB.
Roomate came home the other night with a smile on his face and a samsung behold in his hand. I laughed at him hard for getting such a POS. He of course defends his purchase with "its the top of the line phone".
He then comes home last night with an even bigger smile on his face and this turd in his hand. And i can tell you that thing is a big turd.
Why did it take a 3rd party to finally bring a decent phone to tmo?
I really don't get all the hate, its a good looking mediocrely spec'd Android phone. Yes, there are significantly better spec'd Android phones out now, but there aren't many good looking, or even decent looking Android phones. So at least this brings aesthetics to the table. Maybe it'll even raise the bar a bit if it sells well.
This is what i read from being drunk at 2 in the afternoon on Friday;
"T-Mobile myTouch 3 Gender Limited Edition impressions".
Hey it's Fender!!!! and limited!!!!!!!!!
How desirable is this!???????
Will it sell millin in 72 hours?
If not then it's not as desirable as the most hated phone, right?