Gadgetory

smartphones and Android as an operating system have come a very long way but sometimes it's nice to look back and revisit your roots now that might sound like a bit of a cliche but that gave me an idea what if I took some of the original Android phones and took them for a spin use them as my daily driver and saw just what kind of experience I got with them compared to what I'm able to have today and what all of you are able to enjoy these days as Android users well I picked a doozy the original Google phone so let's find out how it goes because it's judge McGarr from Andhra Authority what's going on everybody and here in my first episode of the flashback series I'm going to give you my unboxing and first impressions on this the t-mobile g1 by HTC and here we are fairly simple packaging we have a quick reference guide right here and you can already see the picture on the front of the keyboard with the screen that slides out that's exactly what I was envious of when I first was doing smartphones or using smart phones I had a blackberry in the beginning and when my friend had this particular phone in black otherwise I was really jealous that was that my first case of real phone Envy but let's take out the device itself the brown Wow this thing is really small I have to say it's it's weird considering how all of these smart phones back in the day were this small and back then we thought that they were humongous to begin with and as time went on the screens got bigger and bigger and well yeah look at where we are now 5.5 inch screens 6 inch screens but none of them have something like this the QWERTY keyboard right underneath the screen that slides right out with a simple mechanism there you go these kinds of form factors I really do miss and I wish that we had them more often in the current smartphone game taking a look at some of the other parts inside of the Box this is the back cover and yes there it is it says Google right on the back perfect there you go battery is installed and I'll go ahead and power on the phone when the time comes it's interesting how the standards have really changed over time I'm about to open up this Micro actually not my cry almost I had to correct myself there we have the charging cable with the plug already put in there but this is a mini USB port as you can see here a mini USB plug very different from the standards that we have today and just another sign of the times and an interesting way of seeing just how things have changed with smartphones from this original Google phone and there we have it the unboxing of the original Google phone the g1 by HTC for t-mobile as you can see t-mobile actually does show up right there now that we're here there's actually one thing that I forgot to do when I put that battery and that's put the SIM card in I do have a t-mobile SIM card right here but there's going to be one big problem here and you're going to see once I get this back cover off right there do you see how huge that area is for the SIM card back then we had very large SIM cards nowadays we have what are called nano SIM cards which are so tiny now really because they learned how to cut apart all of the girth that was around the one area that needed to work looks like this very large one right here is the one that we need now another problem is being posed here the nano SIM adapter requires another shell right underneath it so here is nano to Micro SIM and then finally Micro to original sin so there you have it this is Android the original that came on the g1 it's going to turn down the brightness just a little bit just to make sure that we don't have too much going on see I'm already having some trouble getting around this version of Android because it's just so old now that navigation is quite different sound and display and then I believe it should be down here brightness even the responsiveness of the screen itself is it just feels different compared to what we have today but yeah there you go we have Android here the app drawer is right here and we'll drag it up and here are all the icons for the different applications that are installed and yeah I have 3G working on here at the moment the market as it is still called here it's not even called the Play Store yet we bring down the notification drop-down and yes we can put a SD card in here which is great I already have some voicemails coming inside we'll be able to use this for texting and for calls of course but really everything just looks really different and it's to accommodate this smaller screen of course yes but even then just all of the elements are a little bit different if I hit menu right here we have these settings to be able to change the wallpaper go straight to the settings from here see the notifications as it comes down then go straight into search as well with a quick search box up there I wanted to call somebody I can hit this button and we'll go straight to the phone application which was a different way of doing things back then and something that's definitely not around nowadays with full screens being on the front and of course using the trackball here on the bottom is yet another way of navigating around but with a full touchscreen it's a little bit different now here's where things get even more different I already have the handling down because this is a very small phone but when we are looking at let's say I turn on the phone here hit menu to unlock if I want to search for something there's always the on-screen keyboard right here which obviously we're very used to now so if I wanted to look up something like say Royal rumble results it's pretty simple I'll go ahead and hit the delete button all the way but of course we have the great QWERTY keyboard right here now this was the feature that I was most envious of when it came to the friend that I had who was able to get the g1 while I still had a BlackBerry Bold I really loved how this just looked really different and it was really beautiful but if I wanted to type with here one of the arguments that can be made is that it is just not as quick now I'm sure I'll be able to get used to typing on this keyboard and certainly something I'm going to report on as I use this as my daily driver over the next couple of weeks let's say but nonetheless having this real tactile feel here is to me something that we don't have these days in smartphones and it's something that I wish would come back but now that I actually am typing on a keyboard like this I do see now that there's a reason why we've moved on to touchscreens and so there you have it for this first edition of the Android flashback series I couldn't have picked a better phone to do this flashback series on first then the original Android phone the t-mobile g1 by HTC now there's one thing that's clear I'm not going to have the same experience on here that I do with current phones like say my Moto X 2014 or the Nexus 6 or even the oneplus one that's because while we're dealing with what could be considered in the smartphone industry and ancient piece of technology and I have to tell you going through all of the elements of Android on here along with the QWERTY keyboard in which I really do want tactile feel to come back to smartphones currently and that's the reason why I picked the g1 to start this flashback series I will admit it does indeed feel pretty ancient but nonetheless you're going to see some videos over the next couple weeks from me talking about the camera how things have changed since then talking about the experience of using this on the t-mobile network I already have some problems with speed because I only get the 3G network on here and you already saw how tough it was to get these nano Sims we have now installed onto the full sim on the back behind that or underneath that battery Android has come a long way and that's already clear from this original this preliminary look at the original version of Android and I'm going to go through a lot of different elements of the phone and give my thoughts on how I feel about the g1 but if there's one thing that I'm already excited about with this it's that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have quite a bit of fun trying to get this thing to work for me on the daily it'll be a way for us to see just how far we've come in the smartphone industry and how far Android specifically has come so stay tuned for all of that and all of the best coverage here at Android authority and don't forget to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already drop us some likes on these videos and stay tuned for my flashback series on the t-mobile g1 I'm going to give you my thoughts on a bunch of different aspects and some vlog style videos and let's see what kind of reactions I get being the phone reviewer guy that all my friends know but I'm rocking this original ancient ish piece of technology nonetheless stay tuned for all of that and for even more here at Android authority because of 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