HTC G1 Cell Phone

The G1 is the first phone to be released based on Googles open source Mobile Operating System, Android. If you've owned an HTC phone before then you'll know exactly what the phone itself is like, just as in the Windows Mobile models it's a fairly sturdy, if unglamorous, affair - it's not too heavy and has a fairly usable keyboard.

It's not going to set the world on fire for it's looks, but your not going to be disappointed either. The Android OS itself is straight forward and sensible, it reacts quickly to events, such as a phone call or message, and is overall a very responsive environment.

The 3G connection works well, and whilst not as fast as on some phones is much, much better than the 2G connection of the 1st Generation iPhone that it replaced.

As I mentioned above, this replaced my old cherished iPhone and as such I can't really avoid comparing the two.

Is it as good as the iPhone? Yes and no, if you have a 3G iPhone, then you may want to wait for the second set of G phones coming soon. The G1 just has too many 'niggles' that aren't present in Apples baby. If your stuck with a 1st gen iPhone, however, then this is genuinely an upgrade, the much, much faster 3G connection and GPS are worthy additions, as is the picture messaging, missing from the stock iPhone.

Pros
====
Nice screen, good in bright light
Pretty fast 3G connection
GPS which works seamlessly with Google Maps (well, you'd hope it would)
Lots and lots of Free apps and games on the Android Marketplace
Opensource and (sort of) free development means lots more interesting stuff
Good battery life
'real' bluetooth (iPhone owners will know what I mean)
Picture messaging
Charges through a fairly standard mini-usb cable
Auto syncs contacts, calendars and emails from Google

Cons
====
Always seems to be trying to use a data connection if your not on wifi, regardless of what you disable
Slide out keyboard just doesn't feel right after using the iPhone one
It's exceptionally easy to accidently cut-off a call due to the over sensitive hang up button
Proprietary USB based headphone socket, due to my seller not including all the accessories I had to source this myself - and there aren't any nice ones out there.
It doesn't support the useful double-click headphone button to skip song feature the iPhone uses.
Video playing is 'quirky' and falls apart if the video is too big.
Phone itself is quite 'noisy', much like other HTC phones there is a fair amount of squeeking when you push buttons.
You have to literally pull the back panel off when you change the sim or have to remove the battery - I can't see it surviving too many removals.

I'm actually enjoying the phone, there are a few things i'm missing from the iPhone, but I suspect that as more software is released and the OS is updated the gap will shrink considerably. Because my music collection is quite large and the fact that I moved from a 16GB iPhone I had to put a 16GB micro-SD card in it, I got it from eBay and it's working fine (it's a Sandisk model).