First impressions of the G-2
<p>As a very happy user of the G-1 back when it was the only Android phone available, I was keenly looking forward to what HTC and T-Mobile would do for an encore in the G-2. Especially when T-Mobile promised it would run stock Android with no skin and no unremovable crapware.  I was seriously planning a first-day upgrade when the G-2 came out, just to get the higher data speeds.</p>
<p>Great was my disappointment when they shipped a crippled phone. T-Mobile kept the promise not to add crapware, but they disabled tethering and hotspot &#8211; two absolute must-haves for me.  By the time  these features were un-disabled in a firmware  update, I&#8217;d discarded my plans to upgrade.  The Nexus One is still a very nice phone and a pleasure to use.</p>
<p>But, quite by accident, I now have a G-2 for evaluation.  No, T-Mobile didn&#8217;t send me one; I ran into a friend at the Philadelphia Science Fiction convention who&#8217;s replaced his G-2 with an Android tablet  and wants to sell the former.  So he lent it it to me to try for a while; the theory is, if I like it after a couple of weeks, I&#8217;ll give him fair market minus 15% for depreciation and we&#8217;ll both be happy.</p>
<p>The surprise is that, rather to my own bemusement, I&#8217;m leaning towards giving it back.</p>
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<p>Oh, it&#8217;s chock-full of Android goodness.  And the higher-speed browsing on the HSDPA network is nice. But I find that one feature  I was really looking forward in the G-2 isn&#8217;t such a win after all, and that a misfeature I didn&#8217;t think would be a big deal is bothering me more than I expected.</p>
<p>When I was using my G-1, the thing that griped me most about it was the crappy physical keyboard.  Still, my biggest issue in moving to the Nexus One was the screen-keyboard-only design.  One of the things I was most looking forward to about the G-2 was having a physical keyboard again, and with good fortune a better one.</p>
<p>Now I&#8217;ve got it&#8230;and I&#8217;m barely using it at all.  I got used to tapping the screen on the Nexus, and seldom find that I enter enough text to make the delay while I rig out the G-2 keyboard worth incurring.</p>
<p>What that keyboard does do is exacerbate the G-2&#8217;s size and weight problem.  It&#8217;s about an ounce heavier and half-again as thick as the Nexus, and quite to my surprise I find this makes a significant ergonomic difference.  The Nexus feels slim, elegant, and is a good fit for my hand; the G-2 feels a bit clunky and oversized and brick-like.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s actually an index of progress that I notice these differences.  Both phones run stock Android 2.2, so they&#8217;re not differentiated much at the software level and the software ergonomics is good enough for anyone not a fully-inducted fanatic of the Apple cult. This means that small differences in the hardware platform matter more.</p>
<p>Jury&#8217;s still out on whether I&#8217;ll keep the G-2 &#8211; I&#8217;m leaning against, but more familiarity could change my mind.   I&#8217;ll post reports here.</p>
