Joel Johnson on the Google Android phone
Joel Johnson spent several days living with the T-Mobile G1, the first Google Android phone. His review, posted to BB Gadgets, is a deep critique of the product but it also contains a thoughtful meditation on gadget reviews in general. From his post:
"A few days with the T-Mobile G1, the first Google Android phone"Products are not simply loved or hated, but appreciated over time on a scale which terminates with perfection at one extreme, failure to operate at the other. That scale can be broken down in any number of metrics, all of which are useless: what matters to the owner of a product is not where a reviewer, a single sample, has chosen to mark his opinion at an arbitrary point in time on the scale, but in what direction that point is heading. (And to a lesser and murkier degree, for how long that trend will continue.)
What's lost in the review — the direction of love — is critical. Like romantic love, a slide towards increasing love helps us overlook flaws, remember only the best aspects of our products' features, and gives the relationship between a product and its owner time to flourish and grow. Hidden delights will show themselves after a time, reinforcing the relationship, even as unaddressed incompatibilities might, after a measure, begin to tilt affection towards declination.
the latest
latest episodes
Christ, what an asshole!
Yeah, what does he know about gadgets anyway.
A few days with The T-Mobile G1 and a bottle of absinthe, Joel?
Via painfully obvious avoidance of the iName, he delivers his own crushing blow to the review.
It isn't my iPhone! It just isn't pretty enough! Isn't sufficiently homogeneous in it's interface! Oh me, oh my! I simply can't say!
Really, fanboi, get a grip before damning with faint praise the _first offering_ of an android phone - by a manufacturer not known for its "prettiness" in phones/interface/design/etc.
Most of HTC's phones come with windows mobile.
Enough said.
Some of us, though, like our 'pretty' a little more boxy, and our options of interaction a little more expansive than simply what a team of purist designers would have us bend over for.
*strokes thinkpad, fiddles with nipple*
Half Man Half Biscuit says it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kaOGsC1S1s
In fact, why didn't he mention the Windows Mobile version of the same phone and compare them?
Oh iPhoneo, iPhoneo... Wherefore art thou, iPhoneo?
Almost a good troll, but then you had to use "fanboi".
Also you had to be nuts.
I used an impure word or three!
I'm not pure!
Oh noes!
yeah. so joel doesn't like the G1? so what? i don't really like the iPhone.
but i think his review points towards the inconvenient truth that reviewers often don't have the same evaluation criteria as those reading the review.
for instance... i loved the movie "Starship Troopers." it was a classic "Movie." it was not, however, a "film." it will not replace Battleship Potemkin in the canon of film history. Most reviewers panned the Starship Troopers, but that's okay. I paid my $7.50 and had an enjoyable 1 hour and 45 minutes.
what i would have appreciated from a review of that movie is not something like "oh, this movie is crap." but something more like "if you liked Robo-Cop, you might like this movie. if you're looking for a retelling of Taxi Driver in outerspace, stay clear of this film."
and in tech reviews... when it comes to the more subjective aspects of the product... like the interface or the design, you may want to say things like... "if you looked at the iPhone's design and said 'meh!' you may like the G1."
Not to derail, but since I have no dog in the iPhone hunt I'll just point out that "Starship Troopers" is not a war movie. It is - as are all Verhoeven's English-language movies before "Black Book" - a satire of American values. Possibly the best comic-book movie ever.
I more or less agree with this statement. :)
The problem with Starship Troopers is that the director thought it was Taxi Driver in outer space. Or Nazis in outer space. Ironically, when someone let him about real Nazis on earth, it was actually pretty good.
I just love how nobody can civilly express disagreement about trivial things.
Meaning: Jeez-oos, Dreadletter, get-a-grip. If you'd like, I'm sure someone could re-word your post into one that's not so over the top rude.
It's interesting to see how the self-proclaimed UI-authority and pseudo smart-phone experts are so divided on the two devices.
Personally, my money is on the iPhone only because T-Mobile is such a piece of shit in California. And I can use the Unix terminal.
DCulberson #11: I'll give it a shot:
Symbian FTW?