HTC Dream

“here we are at the end of our very first Android-powered review. The T-Mobile G1 made quite a start and had us impressed on quite a few counts. It's far from the perfect package but it gets the things that mater done and gets them done right. The interface is not only up and running, it has purpose and direction. It maybe a long journey but the first step is daring enough. Instead of trying to expand on an already existing platform Google decided to build a new one from scratch and the effort is well worth it. The immaturity of the platform has its disadvantages too - the limited third party software and the lack of hardware choices. Those are being addressed as we speak of course and the Android Market will be brimming with software sooner rather than later, while new Android devices should be just around the corner set to launch in 2009.”

“The dimensions of the Dream are 117.7 x 55.7 x 17.1mm with a total weight of 158g including the battery. While this may seem pretty hefty, you do have to bear in mind that it has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, so it should be compared with devices such as the HTC Touch Pro and i-mate Ultimate 9502 rather than slim lightweights like the iPhone. The Dream is encased entirely in a matte-black finish. Unlike in the US where it is also offered in white and bronze, this is the only color available in Asia at the moment. The buttons on the front face of the Dream are all located below the screen in a section that's slightly tilted upward. This looks a little strange at first but it does make the device distinct from the wide range of Windows Mobile devices made by HTC. Aside from the Menu, Home and Back buttons which are required to navigate the OS, there are also the Call and Hang Up keys for phone calls. A trackball is found in the center of this entire portion, which allows you to scroll and navigate pages. This is similar to what you will find on most BlackBerry devices starting from the Pearl and Curve series. This tilted part is the only front portion of the Dream that does not move when pushing up the slider to expose the QWERTY keyboard. This blocks the right thumb and takes some getting used to. The layout of the keyboard is a five-row one with dedicated number keys at the top. The keys are small but distinct and make for good typing. Keyboards hidden under sliding screens are usually too flat for comfort but HTC has managed to make those on the Dream sufficiently tactile and we were able to type pretty well on them. Like many of HTC's touchscreen products, the Dream comes with only a single mini-USB port. This is meant for charging, syncing and connecting a wired headset, which means you need an adapter to plug in your favorite 3.5mm audio headphones. A microSD card slot is available on the bottom left side of the device. This is cleverly hidden and can be accessed only when the keyboard is exposed.”

“Between the Youtube videos, fan sites, and ever-cranking rumormills, it's like we knew all about the first Googlephone before we ever got our mitts on one: a boatload of apps available through the Market, built-in Amazon music store, 3G, Wi-Fi, Google Maps with Street View, that crazy shape-driven lock code, and so on. Sure enough, all those message board stars are present and accounted for on the G1, but don't worry: There are still plenty of surprises to keep you entertained.Google4 Surprise #1: Android is pretty freaking on-point for a first-gen software release. Sure, it has bugsWeb pages don't automatically re-size and the zoom feature blowsbut it's also remarkably polished, bristling with nifty tricks. Take the long touch: Not unlike the windows-born right-click, it brings up useful contextual menus. Long touch a field of text, for example, and you get the option to select it, copy it, or paste something in (take that, Jobs!). And though Android's first home is a touchscreen phone, you can tell that the OS was designed to work with hard-buttons as well.”

“The G1 isn't going to blow anyone's mind right out of the gate. Looking only at the hardware, there's nothing here that's particularly impressive, yet nothing that's particularly bad (though the GPS needs some work). It's a fine, solidly designed device that has enough style to please most users -- but it won't win a ton of beauty pageants. Think of it this way: if it were running Windows Mobile, it'd be a footnote in HTC's history. At the end of the day, however, this isn't about the hardware, and really never was. The story here is Android and what it promises... though doesn't necessarily deliver on at first. Like any paradigm shift, it's going to take time. There is tremendous potential for this OS on mobile devices -- it truly realizes the open ideals laid out by Google when they announced this project. The only problem seems to be the stuff they either left on the back burner, cutting room floor, or hoped would come from that exciting, untapped world of open source developers. While there's plenty to praise in this phone, there's a lot more that's missing -- and some of those missing elements are what we consider to be core components of a device in the G1's class. Shortcomings aside, though, you're still buying into one of the most exciting developments in the mobile world in recent memory. When you put the G1 up against, say, a Sidekick LX, it seems like a no-brainer for T-Mobile customers looking for a powerful QWERTY device -- especially at $20 less. You don't need to be a cutting-edge mobile geek or a pundit to do that math. When facing off with platforms like the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, it holds its own, but has a lot of ground to cover before it's really making the competition sweat. Still, if you're just excited to be a part of a platform that's likely going to be around for a very, very long time, the G1's a totally reasonable day-to-day device to make it happen, and we expect some pretty great things from this corner of the market down the road.”