My New(ish) Toy: A Review

Like it? After three and a half years with my Sony Ericsson K750i (an easy to remember figure of time, given that I got it specifically so only Lorraine could contact me before Chloe was born) I finally decided to upgrade my phone about two months ago, allowing me to have all kinds of fun with a new device.

Not that it was easy to move on, mind you. I was on a superb tariff with my K750i, it was a phone I loved and knew like the back of my hand. And I usually only had to charge it about once a week.

So it wasn't altogether easy to move onto a G1, but I did, and for the most part I don't regret it. Let's take a look at some of the benefits of it:

• The tariff. Not quite as good as I was on, but I managed to get eight months free line rental from T-Mobile. Furthermore surfing the web doesn't cost a thing.
• Instant access to my Gmail, which I run just about everything through.
• Lots of apps. Still finding my way around these if I'm honest. Love Twitroid though, makes it super easy to post to my Twitter account, as well as keeping up with friends throughout the day. Beats coming home to 106 tweets.
• Want to flash up your address book? I can do so with pictures. Small thing, but I like it.
• Masses of memory. 2Gb (i.e. lots of music), so no hassle in considering whether or not to get a Sony memory card any more.
• The trackball, which I wasn't looking forward to using, is pretty good for navigating around.
• Phone call quality? Pretty good I'd say. Nice and clear on most calls I've made.

And in the interests of fairness, some of the poorer sides of it:

• First and foremost, the battery life is horrible. I need to charge this just about every day. Yes, every day. Really not good.
• Not all webpages are equal. For instance I really don't like what it does to Google Reader.
• Let's be honest as well, the 3G speeds in the UK aren't great yet. Not bad, but could be better.
• No templates in text messages. Sounds like a small gripe, but when sending a message to Lorraine about when I would be home from various places this used to take me two seconds. Now it is more like two minutes.
• Grouping text messages together. Every to and from you send to one person gets grouped together, until you delete it, when you delete the whole conversation. No more saving the Jack Bannister-themed texts my friend Nick sent me two years ago that still reside on my K750i.
• Twitroid might be too easy to post from, as some of my posts my wife has made on my behalf might attest to.