T-Mobile myTouch
Although the first Google Android phone was a success (albeit moderate) it was eclipsed by more prominent players in the industry such as Apple, Blackberry (Storm) and most recently Palm with their Pre. But despite that Android has garnered much support from many companies and that support keeps growing daily.
It is with this success and support that T-Mobile announces the details regarding their much anticipated follow up to the HTC G1. In case you’re wondering, this phone has been around for some time (over in the UK where it sells under the name of the HTC Magic). But the device is finally coming statewide. The myTouch operates off of Android v1.5 and promises to fix a lot of the problems people had with the first device.
The phone is thinner and lighter then its predecessor and as we said before carries the same hardware found in the HTC Magic (also known as the Google Ion). The feature list sounds pretty impressive also:
Powered by a Walcomm MSM7200Aâ„¢ chip, this little bad boy pumps out 528MHz of power. As said before the phone is running on the x1.5 build of Android. ROM is set at 512MB and RAM is 288MB. Dimensions are pretty slim with 133 x 55.56 x 13.65 mm (4.45 x 2.19 x 0.54 inches). The phone weighs only 4.09 ounces with the battery in so you have a device that is a little smaller then the iPhone but bigger then the Pre.
Those buying the T-Mobile myTouch will also get a 4GB microSD card, so all your tunes will be available to you. You will also be able to expand the memory though the limits are yet to be made clear by either HTC or T-Mobile at the moment.
The T-Mobile G1 will be available on T-Mobile’s U.S network come late July. Customers of T-Mobile will be able to pre-order the device 4 days after Independence Day though. Price is set at $199 with a two-year contract so this falls right in line with the Blackberry Storm, iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre and others.
While a lot of the applications are unchanged, T-Mobile does have a hand in some of them. An example of this is the Sherpa application which was created by Geodelic. This location based application allows you to find restaurants, theaters, stores, businesses, banks etc nearby. While those features have been available for ages on other apps this one adds to it by collecting data about where the user has been, searched for etc. and incorporating this into the search results. It is also able to make recommendations based on the data collected as well as offer advice to events happening locally. This app will be exclusively available to T-Mobile so other Android users around the world will have to wait says Geodelic.
Other then that there are 5,000 other apps currently available on the Android marketplace so while the device may be new, its coming to an already matured platform as well as app store.
While I am quite excited to see the device I cannot help but notice that out of all the networks T-Mobile is one of the worse to be having such a good operating system locked into. It’s quite understandable though as Sprint has the Pre (at least for the next six months) Verizon is in love with Blackberry (and rumored to be playing around with an LTE version of the iPhone), and Apple seems to have had a lock on AT&T for some time now as to prevent any further competition with its beloved iPhone.
That said, most of the U.S carries have expressed interest in Android, but due to politics Google is stuck with T-Mobile. We’ll just have to wait and see what the myTouch can do for them. Hopefully they will be able to move at least a million of these devices like what they did with the G1.
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The device pretty much addresses the faults customers found in the G1. The product development department at HTC sure have their eyes and ears open. I’d expect a little more success than with the G1 if I were T-Mobile.
Unfortunately we won’t be seeing the SenseUI, soon to be found on the HTC Hero, on the myTouch.