For the past month I have had the opportunity to demo the HTC Dream or HTC G1 on the Rogers Wireless network. The HTC Dream is the first mobile phone with the
Google Android 1.5 software or Cupcake.
The first thing you notice upon opening the box and removing the wrapping off the HTC Dream is the screen which measures in at 3.2 inches or 8.1 cm.
One downside I found to the phone was that it had a sliding 5 row QWERTY keyboard. I loved the typical QWERTY keyboard but did not like how it slid out on the side. This is mainly because I have never owned a slide out keyboard before.
The phone is your typical PDA phone but the main things that separate this phone from other PDA's is that it uses the Google Android software. Another seperater is that the HTC Dream does not have any application to type notes on. Sure I could email myself but that's not what the world looks for.
The phone comes with a 2GB Scandisk MicroSD card which allows you to use this phone as your multimedia device as well. No point carrying around 2 devices when the included 2 GB is capable of carrying almost 3 days, or 68 hours, worth of music.
The speed of the phone is definitely exceeds par in both the processing speed & the speed's accomplished while surfing or downloading things off the Internet. WIFI is also a feature on the Dream with both 802.11b/g Wi-Fi being available. But be forewarned, keeping Wi-Fi enabled will have a large impact on a decreased battery time but turning this option off also works.
The phone does use you typical Mini USB so you can charge this phone with other Mini USB chargers which saves you from going out and buying more car chargers.
Inside or Out, the GPS service on the Dream is incredible. Outside, it can accommodate normal GPS usage however inside it can narrow me down to within a few meters, and that's with no windows all really quick. The GPS functionality and quickness on the HTC Dream makes me want to purchase it for that factor alone. This phone makes Geocaching easy!
The touch screen is great, as we would expect any touch screen to be and the phone provides a good 3.2 megapixel camera/camcorder however the camera does not provide any type of flash for photos with less light.
Photo Taken on HTC Dream.
As the phone is using the Google Android software, all the main Google features like Maps, Calendar, Talk, gMail are all available on the device without any installation.
The downside of using all Google software is they programmed the Android 1.5 to use the same username and password for all the Google applications. This was a downside because I have 2 different Google accounts, one which has my calendars, gmail, talk meanwhile my other Google Account has Adsense, Analytics, and Google Latitude. Google Android only allows you to login to one Google account, and that's or all applications. Google also does not allow accounts to be merged which also doesn't help as I want to be able to pick and choose which Google Talk account I login as.
The upside of this is that when editing my Calendar, the changes are reflected on my Google Calendar as well. This way everything is in sync which is really important when you have a hectic schedule.
Lastly, and most important is the ability to make phone calls which is really easy. For phone calls, you can simply dial by using the touch screen. And while Rogers used to have spotty service, throughout the demo of this phone I was able to see that their service has had some major increases in coverage.
At the end of the day, the question is would I suggest this phone to other users? Without a doubt I would and have. The HTC Dream is extremely easy to catch onto and use. It's functionality is pretty good and overall I would be satisfied with this phone.
