Review: T-Mobile G2
Bluetooth
Bluetooth worked well with the T-Mobile G2. I was able to pair all of my Bluetooth devices with no trouble. The phone connected quickly to my Bluetooth headset, and sound quality was better than I expected from the device. I had few signal problems, though sound did occasionally crackle or drop out (as it always does). You can even use the voice dialing features over Bluetooth, which is a rarity among Android devices. I was also able to play music through my stereo speakers and send a photo from the image gallery to my laptop.
Clock
The T-Mobile G2 does a fine job as a watch replacement, though it lacks some style. The lock screen offers a big digital clock, and the screen is bright enough that you can read it on the go, even on a sunny day. You can use the included widget to place analog clocks on any (and every) homescreen, though the phone lacks the dozen or so clock choices you'll find on an HTC Sense handset. There are obviously more clocks available from the App Market, though. The phone also keeps the time in the notification bar, which remains up top through most apps. Tap that bar to see the current date.
GPS
GPS performance on the T-Mobile G2 was impressive. The phone found me quickly and tracked me accurately on my walking trips around the neighborhood or driving in and out of the city. The G2 uses Google Maps for navigation, and Maps works very well. I had significant trouble using the highways around Nashville, TN, with bad directions and poor routing, but I noticed other phones using other apps had similar trouble, so I'll chalk that up to recent traffic pattern changes.
The T-Mobile G2 comes with a wealth of extra apps on board, and many of these rely on GPS. The coolest might be the Google Sky Map app, which uses your GPS position and compass heading to show you a map of the stars overhead. There is also My Tracks, a sort of breadcrumbs app that follows you on a trip and gives you travel data, and Latitude, a sort of proto-social network based on location. In all of these, the G2 performed exceptionally well. One warning, though: no feature I used with the G2 drained the battery faster than GPS features.
Other Extras
One feature missing from the T-Mobile G2 is Wi-Fi hotspot support. Many other high-end Android phones let you create a Wi-Fi network for other devices around you. So, you can connect your laptop to T-Mobile's 3G network using a Google Nexus One as a hotspot, for instance. Like with Wi-Fi calling, T-Mobile has acknowledged user interest in this feature, but has not guaranteed that it will officially come to the T-Mobile G2.
Though I don't usually think of Android phones as gaming devices, I was pleasantly surprised by the gaming performance of the T-Mobile G2. I tried to find the most processor-intensive, 3D games available on the App Market, for free or for cash. The G2 tore through the best of them, performing better than my Google Nexus One or the Samsung Fascinate Galaxy S phone I have on hand. The framerate seemed faster on the G2, and the phone was at least as responsive to tilting and tapping action as any of the other phones. It seems like the Android gaming hardware has arrived, and now the App Market needs to catch up.
The T-Mobile G2 is unique among Android phones in all of the extra software that Google loads on the phone, and won't let you remove. Usually, it's Verizon or AT&T software that I'm complaining about, not Google. On the G2, however, you won't be able to get rid of Google Finance or Google Shopper, even if you never use these apps. Some of the apps, like Google Goggles, are cool, if not entirely useful. But some are neither cool nor useful, though they are permanent. Fortunately, even when the app drawer gets crowded, you can ignore these apps because there is so much space to customize on the homescreen. The phone comes with almost 2GB of space available to the user to store apps, and that doesn't count apps that are capable of storing data on the microSD card, instead of the internal memory.
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