Returning the G1 for the Pre

Over the last couple weeks I have tried to use the G1 sometimes known as the g-phone, google phone, or the first phone running on the android OS from t-mobile.  All in all, the phone was not that great in the performance (speed) department and contact management, specifically imports/export functionality from Outlook or any desktop application through gmail to the phone was TERRIBLE. 

The available aps for the G1 were fantastic, and the phone did grow on me, even after I decided to return it, but the contact management issues were a non-starter, the device slowness moving from ap to ap, and the very poor camera (shutter speed terrible and the button didn’t really work right when you pushed it to click a picture) were all serious issues that I could not look past.

So instead, I picked up service from Sprint and got a Palm Pre.  (at&t is not an option for me because they stole $1,000 from me in 2000 and I won’t do business with them ever again, if I can help it).

The Palm Pre out of the box was a great experience.  Connections have been much much easier to manage, and I’m very very impressed by many features of this smaller, lighter phone with a keyboard that I can type on with one hand if I choose (something that was not an option with the G1).

Battery ‘Life’ – Battery Optimization Tips

When I first got my Pre it was half charged out of the box.  I was porting a phone number from T-Mobile over to Sprint and the activation was delayed by about 5 hours (can take up to 72 hours).  Anyway during that time the phone was cycling through a 5, 3, 5, 3 activation attempt cycle.  After it activated, I was using it heavily to get things set up.  Long story short, the battery didn’t seem very strong out of the box.

I let it charge all night long, and will see how it does now that it has reached full.  That said, having talked to one of the engineers/product designers at CES, I was given the distinct impression that this would be a device that needs regular if not constant charging.  So I also went out looking for some tips on how to improve the battery life, by optimizing some settings.

I found 3 tips that seemed relevant to me.  The first two are below:

Turn on Wi-Fi. Sounds unintuitive, right? Well, the Pre doesn’t have the greatest Sprint reception of anything we’ve ever tested, and it actually has a relatively power-efficient Wi-Fi radio. When the Pre’s Wi-Fi is running, it uses Wi-Fi rather than 3G to make Internet connections. So connecting via Wi-Fi saves battery rather than wasting it.
Change your e-mail settings. By tapping on the upper left corner of the screen in the e-mail program, you can pop down a menu that lets you change e-mail preferences. For accounts where you get relatively little mail, set them to push. But for accounts where you get an e-mail every five minutes or more often, set them to check every 15 minutes. That will save battery.

Source ExtremeTech.com

The third I found in a forum on Pre’s and it recommends turning off the GPS locator when you are not using the GPS functionality.  Thing is I have no idea where to do that! 

So after I finish this quick article, that will be one of the next things I look for, along with an application for the Pre that takes screen shots!

I purchased a new G1 on Friday.  My phone has pretty much been dead to me since.  I was debating on getting a PRE from Sprint (new carrier for me) or getting a G1 from T-Mobile my preferred carrier.  I ultimately decided to opt for the G1.  It had most of the functionality I was looking for, it was on my T-Mobile plan so no need to kill a contract, and the plan pricing seemed right.

BUT

I rapidly learned that the G1 kind of sucks (seriously, not an anti-fan boy statement or anything).

It can only import contacts via GMail and Gmail contact import definitely does suck.  Here’s why, it maps all of your contact fields to a text note field in gmail. 

ergo if you have an email address in an email field, it gets dumped in the notes field.  If you have a phone number in a phone number field, it gets piled in the notes field too.  If you have an address, zip code, cell phone etc in their respective fields, Gmail does not provide mapping to send it to the Gmail fields it just dumps everything into a generic notes field.  In fact, all in the SAME generic notes field. 

That might be OK, if you have say, 20 or 50 contacts.  Pain in the ass, but ok.

But I have 1,600 contacts.  I’ve been around awhile and have done a lot of business with a lot of people over the years, not to mention my social networking contacts.  There is no way in the world that I can go into Gmail and start copy pasting text out of a note field into the actual data field Google should have been able to map to.

So today is Sunday, 48 hours after I bought my new phone.  I can’t call anyone with the dumb phone.  And I do use the word dumb in a literal way.  The G1 is no smart phone, it has been dumbed down due to Gmail.  So today, I’m boxing everything up and returning it to TMobile for a refund.  T-Mobile my favorite carrier is not really to blame here (other than approving a PDA smart phone for their line up that can’t import any phone numbers).

But I’m going to have to take my business elsewhere on this one.  I have lost 2 days with the phone, and missed a couple important calls as well.  Plus, the goofy ear bud that jacks into the usb slot on the bottom of the phone is almost impossible to hear through.

Oh, and T-Mobile sold me a G1 with a version number of 1.0 as opposed to the more currently available 1.1 or 1.5.  The hardware is the same, but the firmware is different.  The big difference is that I CAN NOT update my own firmware.  There’s an update out there, but I can not access it through the phone because 1.0 does not literally have the ‘update’ button deep down in settings.  This means I have no on screen keyboard, no video recorder and who knows what else.

No phone, no address book, static generating ear buds, no ‘update’ button –> Phone Return. 

For what its worth I do like the interface, the keyboard is not as comfortable as my old treo 700, but not bad.  I seem to recall having a keyboard adapter for an old old palm pilot years back that felt exactly the same as the G1.  From a tactile perspective, the G1 keyboard is not bad, its just a little dated (by about 10 years).

Oh and by the way if you need technical support from T-Mobile for the G1, you have to say ‘Blackberry technical support’ in the automated menu to actually get to the PDA department of t-mobile which services the G1 too.  (This is what a t-mobile tech support person told me)  The phone menu system has not yet been configured to respond to ‘G1 Problems’, ‘G1 techsupport’ ‘G1 help’ etc.

Monopoly power wants my contacts

I also wanted to mention that it trouble me a bit that I HAVE to upload my contacts to Google.  They are a monopoly after all and already monitor almost every website I visit.  Now through their G1 phone, they can monitor all the calls I make, not to mention the emails I send.  I’m a former signals intelligence analyst and understand the principals of gleaming information from an analysis of communications node.  Frankly, letting them get their hands on 2 more nodes (contacts and calls) is a little troubling.  People would be up in arms if Microsoft forced you to upload all of your contact information into one of their databases, can’t understand why people let that slide with Google.

Google Can’t Even Export its own Data from Gmail Successfully

One of the suggestions I received from tmobile tech support involved the concept of exporting some contacts from Gmail into a csv format, so that I could then use the csv column headings to manually update the columns of my own csv file.  So I tried exporting a single contact to get the file headers.

I used my wife’s contact info, which included home and work addresses.

Google’s exported file failed to export the city, state and zip code of the addresses for home and work.  So even if I use these headings, to manually construct my own CSV Google will probably strip out this very important information.