T-Mobile G1 in Smartphones

Attachments are a worry, too. Android seems only to offer download to local storage intermittently and even then only for supported file types, plus the preview option doesn't have a hugely varied list of supported file types.

We tested it with a number of different attachments, including some PDFs, a selection of office documents, a Zip file and a number of JPG images, and we weren't impressed. The PDF previews didn't include images and wouldn't download, an email with multiple image attachments hung the phone, a Zip file was simply displayed as an attachment in an email with no option to download and we were only able to preview a Word document.

Elsewhere, the document compatibility issue raises its head once more. Though you can view office documents, there's no way to create and edit documents out of the box, for instance, and no note taker preinstalled either. Surprisingly, Android only allows you to view Google Docs, not edit or create new ones.

Extending and expanding

Fortunately the Market - Android's equivalent to Apple's App Store - looks more promising. There's already a generous selection of free games and applications available for download right from the off, and although many of these are quite basic, it can only improve.

Software is split into categories and downloading and installing them, as with most operations in Android, is incredibly quick and easy. Just browse to the application in question, click it and you're taken through the process, step by simple step.

The hardware

In terms of its core specification, the G1 is reasonably well-endowed, as we've come to expect from HTC-manufactured handsets. There's HSDPA for fast downloads and browsing, Wi-Fi, assisted GPS, Bluetooth, plus an accelerometer for games and rotating the screen, but, once you look past the sparkly new UI, you'll quickly discover that this isn't the most fantastic handset around.

Despite being able to boast autofocus, the quality of the images produced by the three-megapixel camera is ropy. The physical design of the handset is also far from slick. It's chunky, measuring a 19.5mm at its thickest point and heavy, too.

Build quality is creaky, and, as with many previous HTC designs, there's no 3.5mm headphone socket or even a 2.5mm one. If you want to use anything other than the boxed headset, you'll need to purchase an adapter.

It is a reasonably practical design elsewhere, with a decent keyboard tucked away under the sliding screen. As mentioned above, the BlackBerry-esque clickable trackball, works well for moving around web pages and scrolling up and down lists of contacts and emails.

Conclusion

We had hoped for some other ray of hope, but alas if was not forthcoming. Battery life is poor - we opened a half-hour call, downloaded 47MB of data and turned off Gmail synchronisation and this drained the battery by almost 50 per cent. We haven't had the chance to complete the test yet - we plan to let it run down, simply checking a POP3 mail account once every 30 minutes - to see how it fares under light use, but at this rate we can't see it lasting more than two days, which is par or perhaps even short of the Touch Diamond.

And the price is high. With the G1, T-Mobile had a great chance to undercut the price of the iPhone; but it turns out to be roughly the same. The only deal available at the time of writing is a £40 per month contract with unlimited data. The phone is free, but this works out at only £10 cheaper overall than the iPhone on its £35 per month tariff.