The T-Mobile G2 Preview
by Vivek Gowri on October 7, 2010 12:29 PM EST
HTC has been having some interesting problems with the G2. For an HTC handset, it seems like there are a lot of minor issues popping up all over the place. I already mentioned the loose hinges issue, but there’s also an issue with the amount of memory the phone ships with. The G2 is supposed to have 4GB of NAND built in, whereas the Desire Z has 2GB of flash memory. More than a few G2’s (including mine) have shipped with 2GB onboard as opposed to the 4GB that it should be. It sounds like a pretty simple assembly line mixup on HTC’s part, but it’s still odd to see so many production issues with an HTC device, regardless of how new it is. I’m supposed to be exchanging mine for a different unit sometime soon, but we’ll see how T-Mobile decides to handle this one.
Edit: A bit of Googling brings me to this thread on the xda-developers forum, which basically says that the G2 ships with a 4GB NAND chip onboard, but the remainder of the memory is not recognized. How T-Mobile/HTC plan to fix this issue still remains to be seen.
Overall though, the G2 has the potential to impress. Great design, a great keyboard, good screen, solid camera/camcorder and good performance. The hinge and battery life are two significant issues that prevent the phone from being great. I suspect T-Mobile's sudden stop of preorders for the G2 has more to do with correcting the build quality issues and less with actually fulfilling demand. There's unfortunately no way around the battery life, but we'll reserve a full conclusion for when we have our entire suite of battery tests complete.
The manufacturing issues aside, G2 seems to live up to the immense hype it had before launch, and T-Mobile seems to have a winner on their hands. Most people who got G1 contracts early on should be set to upgrade right about now, making the G2 doubly attractive to those people.
For a number of reasons, the G2 strikes a unique place in the market, one that has been sorely missed since the passing of the original G1. As the first top tier GSM Android device with a keyboard (since the G1), the first top tier HTC GSM Android device (since the Nexus One), and the only Android device on any network that’s running a completely stock version of Android, the G2 is going to get a lot of fans really quickly. Let's hope T-Mobile can address the hinge issues quickly enough to avoid disappointing those eager fans.
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alephxero - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Which port of Quake 3 is it that you used in the test?vol7ron - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Could you also include the G1 "Physical Comparsion" statistisics for comparison?crazzeto - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
The last time I was dissapointed by an HTC device. The Verizon Wireless VX6800 wasn't very good, honestly it felt cheap from the get go. I did eventually have a partial fail of the slider hardware (half of it came off, for no apparent reason).More recent HTC devices seem better perhaps, but the VX6800 convinced me to go Motorola for my droid and honestly, I'm incredibly glad I did!
Dark Legion - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Why isn't the droid incredible running 2.2? The benchmarks make it look a lot worse when it should be on par with the evo and n1.fausto412 - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
i guess i can blame the iphone reviews for opening the gate,.is pc hardware that dead these days?
can we get an update on HTPC building and cable card compatibility? would like to learn more about that.
what about new monitor technology and how it compares to the old TN technology?
what about a high end gaming mouse review and round up that takes into accounts software support included and new features? g9x, cyborg, g500.
there is stuff to cover in pc realm. can get get back it?
metafor - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
The phone market is exploding while the PC market isn't seeing much growth. There also really haven't been much in the way of innovation on the PC side for quite a while now.Myrandex - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
The keyboard is surprisingly familiar to the Touch Pro 2's (superior to every other keybaord I've tried) keyboard, I do feel the need that with the space of such a large screen, another row of keys would have been nice to get a dedicated row of number keys across the top.The hinging mechanism is definitely interesting though!
Jason
NguyenAdam - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Is this phone SIM free? I would love to use it on AT&T.Roland00 - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
if you do so the phone will just reload the OS from an included rom chip. Is this true?phoenix79 - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Am I the only one that's noticing some pretty blatant errors in this article? First is the virtual keyboard, mine came with Swype installed alongside the stock one and enabled by default. As for the 2GB of memory, 5 minutes of googling and you would find out that the phones physically have a 4GB chip in them, this has been known for days.It seems that the fact-checking here has gotten considerably worse as of late...