T-Mobile selling the G1

I saw my first add for T-Mobile’s G1 yesterday. The Google Android based phone has it’s own site now. On T-Mobile’s site you can currently buy one for $179 after a $200 rebate. (How do you give a rebate for your own hardware?) Last week Google officially liberated the source code. Here are some other pre release opinions. So now that it is live, how does it compare to the iPhone? Well, it sacrifices some size to a real keyboard that would be helpful to those that text a lot I am sure. Inclusion of a microSD is a great plus, but it appears to be limited to 8gig. The phone is still sim locked, and doesn’t appear to have a sync application. This is interesting. It is dependent on, and expects you to use Gmail and other Google apps. I am not sure I like this. I haven’t drunk the Google cool aid yet. I have a gmail account, but I still like desktop apps. If I could get my address book, calendar and mail to sync with Google’s offerings, then maybe it would work. Maybe I just need to give into the idea of cloud computing more. I think I will stand back and see how the next few months play out. The platform being more open than Apple’s should allow developers to create some interesting things. It will be worth watching.

iPhone NDA lifted

I really would like a phone/device with a data plan that allows web browsing and running of applications. The recent lifting of the iPhone NDA is really got me wanting an iPhone. If only the data plans didn’t cost another $30 on top of a voice plan… I really like the idea of apps that you can download, and like the idea even more of writing something myself. What you ask? Good question, but it would be fun to try.

Some part of me was holding off (other than price) waiting for the Google Android to see the light of day. The T-Mobile phone (whose network sounds better than AT&T’s) is unfortunately not an iPhone killer. It was disappointing to see this attempt from google fall short. I am also not very impressed that a phone and platform that is supposed to be open has been so restrictive.

Now that the iPhone NDA has lifted, I am getting tempted again. I gave up running linux as a desktop to run a Mac, I may just give up on Android to get an iPhone too.