So yesterday was a pretty important day in the mobile world. The “Google Phone” was announced. After all the rumors surrounding Google’s first handset,  T-Mobile announced the HTC G1 (Dream, hence the title), running Google’s Android OS.

Although, Android is an impressive and exciting concept, the phone on which they chose  to implement this new OS is far from exciting. In today’s day and age there really is no reason HTC should be releasing a phone that can not transfer files via Bluetooth. That is just one of the many disadvantages of the new G1.

The G1 does not support stereo Bluetooth, making it difficult to listen to music wirelessly. Well, no biggie, right? I can just use my regular headphone, right? Wrong! The phone has no 3.5 mm headphones jack. That means, if I want to listen to music from my phone, I need to buy some ugly adapter and plug it into the phone, and only then can I use my headphones. Does that sound like a state of the art, high-end phone to you?

The phone supports 3G speeds, but only an older generation, UMTS and no HSDPA, which is significantlty faster. It offers push Gmail, which is kinda cool, I guess, but no exchange support. It has a 3 MP camera, not too shabby, but no video capabilities (the iPhone might be able to get away with that because it makes up for it in other areas, but cmon HTC).

Like with many other phones that were recently announced, my conclusion is that if this phone had been released in the pre-iPhone era, maybe it would have impressed me more, but all that is left is to quote GSMArena.com when they say:

“So we waited a whole year now just to see a poor iPhone replica with a QWERTY keyboard that doesn’t even look half as good. It seems HTC have not put any effort in the design – and even the functionality is flawed. So thanks, but no thanks! Let’s see the next one, please!”

On the marketing side of things, I guess this ad is OK, in a Microsoft kinda way.

-Hillel