I enjoy looking for the potential of a product and try to not get swayed by the hype of something new. The T-Mobile G1, also known as the Google phone, has a lot of potential.

The phone goes on sale at 8 a.m. Wednesday at T-Mobile stores across the country. The company expects people to line up. T-Mobile, in fact, let current customers pre-order the phone and got so many requests, it tripled its order of the HTC-made cell phone. So, yes, this is a hotly anticipated phone that many T-Mobile subscribers have been wanting (disclosure: I’m a T-Mobile customer).

Getting the chance to play with the G1 for the past week is an opportunity that few consumers get. (You could probably try it out for 14 days yourself since most cell phones offer 14 days to return a phone if you don’t like it.) I’ve been writing about the pros and cons about the device for the past week (the first three days, the GPS didn’t work) but let me sum that up with this post.

What I loved 

Hands down, the top feature is the integration with Google. While it’s scary for anyone to rely on one company so much, Google makes it too easy to do. I use Gmail, Google Calendar, iGoogle and Google News, although not exclusively. By entering my user name and password, the phone synched up my e-mail, calendar and contacts. Now, because I don’t rely on Google 100 percent, I still would have to sync all my phone contacts with the G1, plus any photos, music and other files I want on the phone. But this is definitely the ease I’ve been looking for.

I also love Google’s Android Market (read my previous post “Review: Fun with the Google Android Market“), the store where you download software or ‘apps’ straight to the phone. Other phone systems have this — iPhone has the Apple Apps store, Verizon users have the ‘Get it now’ store. But again, I like the potential of the Android Market. The company’s million-dollar apps contest resulted in 1,788 entries. Right now, only about 30 are available on the phone. All are free. Paid apps are supposed to launch in the next few weeks. As for the other 1,758 apps? Time will tell how useful those are and if developers will continue to push this operating system. I sure hope so.

The phone itself is bulky because it includes a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. I won’t knock the G1 for its heft. There are a ton of other smart phone that are just as awkward. Even the iPhone has the same basic measurements except that it is much skinnier — and still too big for my taste. If thickness is a concern, keep in mind that T-Mobile and HTC aren’t the only ones who will be offering a Google phone. See? Lots of potential here for new designs.

What I hated

I’m not a big text messager and with the keyboard, the G1 is seriously targeting the texting crowd. But for me, the keys on the keyboard are in a light gray and are hard to see, even when lit up. There is no virtual keyboard so if you want to type, you need to slide open the phone. I found this a bit annoying, especially when I just wanted to reply ‘k’ to a text message or type in a ZIP code on Google Maps. Minor gripe, of course, but it’s just that extra physical effort made me wish it had the option of a virtual keyboard.

The screen also wasn’t as responsive as I’d like it to be, forcing me to tap the screen several times on some occasions. Selecting a hyperlink on a web page was also tricky because everything is so small on screen you had to make sure you tapped the link just so. Of course, you could spend a couple seconds enlarging the view. And one thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to highlight text onscreen. Every time I attempted to highlight text in order to delete it or replace it, the phone only let me delete one character at a time. 

The battery was also terrible, but there are ways to prolong battery life. With Wi-Fi, GPS and 3G service operating, the fully charged phone lasted about six hours, with most of that time spent in standby mode.

Everyone who played with the phone commented on how slow it in pulling up Web sites. I agree because I’m impatient. But I also think we’re all spoiled with our speedy home connections. Regardless, an online speed test said I was getting 2.3 megabit-per-second connections (pictured on right). That’s amazingly fast for a cell phone – but I’m not sure I believe it since T-Mobile says its 3G service is more like 1 Mbps.  With T-Mobile being the last to offer the 3G Internet, this is a ding more against T-Mobile than the phone.

Other features — like voice quality, the 3-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, sound quality — were adequate. Nothing out of the ordinary.  No kinks, either.

I haven’t completely decided whether the G1 will be my next phone. While the phone is bigger than what I want to carry, the ease of not having to think about adding new contacts and calendar items is a huge plus. And getting my e-mail, blogging and instant messaging is another big benefit. 

Let me say that I’m definitely leaning toward this phone, more so than the iPhone. Except for a brief time in college, I’ve always been a PC user. And I rarely use my iPod. Apple has some mighty fine products but I haven’t successfully integrated any with my life.

For phones, it’s really the Google software that interested me most and if more models are coming out soon, I may try to hold out a little longer.

Addendum, 10/21/08: On Day 8, I realized that the G1 isn’t video friendly. This is something I took for granted in the first 7 days and thought why bother testing the video feature when every phone has it? Wrong! So, the camera does not record video. And not only does this not have a built-in video player (It does, however, have a music player), I also have not been able to get .mov nor .mpg files to play. I transferred two such movie files directly to the phone from my PC via a cable, but there was no way to access them. So, I e-mailed the videos to my Gmail account, but I only got the error message “Cannot play video.” There is a link to YouTube if you want to watch other people’s videos. 

Related:

• Review: Fun with the Google Android Market
• Google phone? Yep, we got one — photos and first impressions
• See lots of pics of the new Google phone, the T-Mobile G1 (slideshow)
• Finally, T-Mobile speaks: 3G Internet coming to O.C.
• The Google phone is coming, here are your options

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