I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know that you have all come to rely heavily on my blog posts for their witty and informative style. It’s like teaching the proverbial hungry man to fish and then taking away his fishing pole. Very cruel and I will try to not let it happen again.
This latest blog post is actually from one of our new employees who played with a T-Mobile MyTouch 3G phone we had laying around the office. We let him use it for about 10 days and here is what he had to say…
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G (also called the HTC Magic) is the second Google Android phone to hit the US market, and it definitely made a good showing in today’s multimedia/touchscreen/app world we live in.
T-Mobile MyTouch 3G
At first glance, the MyTouch appears to be a finely polished version of the older, bulkier G1 sans the physical keyboard. This sleek design makes it a friendly fit for your pocket – even if you’re one of those trendy guys wearing skinny jeans; you know who you are.
It has a nice sized touchscreen together with a volume toggle on the left side and six additional buttons directly under the display: Home, menu, call, end call, back, and a “google search” button. Why they added a physical search button on the phone is beyond me.
You will also find a gargantuan track ball amongst the 6 hot keys. This button is great at, well, nothing really. Why would I want a scroll wheel on a touchscreen phone? It’s like the HTC designers that built the MyTouch had both iPhone and Blackberry envy. A scroll wheel only makes sense if you don’t have a touchscreen (or you break your touchscreen and can’t use it anymore).
The one hardware design flaw I really noticed was the lack of a 3.5-mm jack. I really don’t know how they could have missed this. Yes, they have the mini-USB port I can plug the stock headphones into, but come on, I’d like to be able to plug in the awesome Bose headphones I don’t have because I can’t afford them…yet.
Now on to the user interface. This is where you find your contacts, plan your dates (anyone out there need a date?), and browse the web. You will find the touchscreen very responsive, and pretty finger friendly – even people with fat fingers like me. The MyTouch has the three different windows/displays, just like the G1. These are all fully customizable with whatever icons you choose to put on your main displays.
While there is no physical keypad, there is touchscreen keypad for text messaging, emailing, surfing the web, etc. When you turn the phone horizontally, this keypad widens which makes it a little easier to type (at least for me). The one exception to this is when using the Google search. In this case the keypad will not rotate and enlarge – it stays in vertical mode. That doesn’t bother me too much, but I’m sure it’s an issue for some.
While I’m on the subject of Google search, a cool feature is voice activated search. This allows you to speak your search terms directly into the phone instead of typing them. It takes a little time to process your voice, but it is definitely an awesome feature. I found it to be very accurate at figuring out what I wanted to search for.
The 3G web browsing is fairly quick and the internet functionality is pretty solid. Google has paid attention to some of the small details like allowing you to click on a phone number and copying the number right to your “dialer”. You are also able to copy addresses right off the internet into Google maps which I think is a great feature. Another big advantage of the MyTouch is that Google has made it easy to tether your phone to a PC or laptop. Tethering, for those that don’t know, allows you to connect your computer to the internet using your phone as the modem. PdaNet is a great app for getting tethering up and running.
Lastly, I’m going to review a few apps that I thought would be useful, or at least fun. While it’s not so much an app as software built into the phone, I’m going to mention Google maps. It’s a pretty self explanatory mapping program and the cream of the crop. It’s a wonderful piece of software. Beyond that, I downloaded Weatherbug and Pandora.
Weatherbug is an outstanding weather updater. It allows you to see the temperature in your notifications tab as well as semi-live Doppler when you launch the actual application. I am always on the run going from place to place, so knowing the weather and temperature at the tap of my fingers is fantastic.
Now, on to Pandora, an application for music lovers. You can customize radio stations to fit your favorite genre of music or just find someone that’s already created a “station” that you like. You can search by artists or genre, and even purchase the songs right from the application. The only thing that would make this application a bit better would be a 3.5-mm headphone jack on the phone…of course, we’ve already been over that.
Overall this phone is better than I expected. Android’s firmware 1.6 is quick and responsive. The phone does a lot of great things and I think Google is in a good position to make it even better in the future. If you are looking for a user-friendly device that allows you to make calls, search the web, and have a little fun in-between, you will find the T-mobile MyTouch 3G a nice phone.
