T-Mobile G2 Review: The Purest Android Experience You will get [Video]

The official sequel to the first Googlephone, the T-Mobile G2 is a while coming. In a market where carriers molest the open OS anew whenever a new handset drops, it truly is the Android phone for the Android nerd.

The Nexus One was the Google Phone, Google’s definitive vision for what an Android phone need to be. But, you basically can’t buy one anymore . All the best Android phones now are slathered with customized (often inferior) user interfaces and topped with a generous helping of bloatware. The G2 is the brand new ” Google Phone,” or the closest thing to it. A Nexus One with a keyboard. It’s running a (mostly) stock build of Android 2.2 , and it’s preloaded with a ton of Google’s Android apps, which are typically the smartest ones around anyway. And it’s a showcase for T-Mobile’s pumped up ” 4G speed” -but-not-4G 3G network, which they’ve juiced to speeds of 14.4Mbps with the HSPA+ standard.

Every slider phone comes with tradeoffs. Namely, bulk. It’s just physics. The G2 has been nipped and tucked so it’s just a hair thicker than the HTC Evo, that’s impressive, until you realize the whole iPhone 4 is thinner than the G2′s lower half. But the heft mostly works for it, adding to the sense you’re rolling like a significant nerd, particularly if you’re pounding out text with the giganto keyboard.

The five-megapixel camera, while it’s not quite iPhone 4-level, appears to be better than the HTC Evo, in both stills and 720p video. (Check up on full samples here .)

See our Android 2.2 review for more details on the software, but it surely’s worth noting that it’s still striking (in an ideal way) how utterly, constantly connected you are feeling on Android with Google Talk, Latitude, push Gmail, integrated Twitter and Facebook, versus the iPhone. Apple’s is a miles more siloed experience. The drawback of that iron-grip tether to the web is that it makes you more wary about battery life, particularly whenever you roam somewhere with a less-than-great T-Mobile signal, like outside of its urban strongholds. (Within the city, with HSPA+ T-Mobile is impressively quick.)

Everything that we adore about Android 2.2 applies here: It’s fast, polished, has a mature app store experience, and the fitting interface of any Android phone. Period. The keyboard is serious, a boon for road warriors with a significant email jones.

The hinge for the G2′s presto! keyboard! action is gimpy. It doesn’t feel robust enough to resist thousands of snaps open and closed. There’s also no good place to position your thumbs to push the screen up, so sometimes you’ll inadvertently press keys on the keyboard or touch the screen if you open the phone. I pinched myself a few times after I closed it. It’s type of a disconcerting piece of engineering when the total phone’s literally designed around it.

The speakerphone appears like garbage. It’s harsh and tinny. Worse, the speaker’s on the back of the phone, so in case you place it on a desk it gets even more muffled. The trackpad is sort of pointless, and due to the way in which it’s recessed into the body, not very responsive.

The big, showstopping flaw? There’s a rootkit designed to forestall people from tinkering with the software-something that’s against the original spirit of Android. T-Mobile says it’s a security feature, but whatever the reason, it keeps people from modding the G2′s software until they get around it. And it’s even lamer to peer it on the G2, that is trying invoke those roots as a sequel to the G1. Oh, and there’s some minor crapware inbuilt, like a pestering Photobucket app you’ll be able to’t delete. Who is Android open for, exactly?

After all, everything that’s good concerning the G2 outweighs the bad, especially while you’re not planning on diving into the code yourself. In the event you’ve got a broken down G1 waiting to be replaced, or just need a clean Android experience, that’s still probably your phone.

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This post is tagged: closest thing, megapixel camera, slider phone, user interfaces, video recording