Sleek and classy, the T-Mobile G2 is the carrier's first high-speed HSPA+ handset, and its and the best smartphone with a keyboard you can buy on T-Mobile. The G2 is fast, powerful, and it feels expensive. If you're looking for an executive-class Web and messaging phone on T-Mobile's network, look no further.
Having said that, the G2 isn't quite what it claims to be. This handset has been billed as the "pure" Android experience, much like the original T-Mobile G1 (3.5 stars) and the Motorola Droid (4 stars). It isn't. Rather, it's a Google and T-Mobile experience—full of Google apps, but with its tethering feature removed by the carrier. This shouldn't make a huge difference to your buying decision, and a lot of those undeletable Google apps are quite fun, but this will probably have some geeks up in arms.
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T-Mobile G2 : Front
T-Mobile G2 : Keyboard
T-Mobile G2 : Right
T-Mobile G2 : Back
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Hardware and Phone Calling
Made by smartphone veteran HTC, the T-Mobile G2 feels like a luxury product. At 4.68 by 2.37 by .55 inches (HWD) and 6.5 ounces, it's quite heavy and is constructed of metal and silver plastic, but the metal is strategically placed so your fingers are usually on it, giving the phone its luxurious feel. There's an optical trackpad for navigation below the super-sharp 3.7-inch, 800-by-480-pixel LCD.
The screen slides with a powerful, guillotine-like snap to reveal a sweet four-row QWERTY keyboard, with a large space bar. The most intriguing thing about this keyboard is three user-customizable quick keys which can be set to launch any app. You'll have to memorize which one you set to what function, but it's a neat idea. When the phone is closed, there's a nice on-screen keyboard with Swype, which makes entering text a snap.
A truly great voice phone, reception on the G2 is strong and the earpiece sounds clear and true. It isn't blaringly loud, but it's loud enough. The speakerphone is also loud enough for outdoor use. Transmissions through both mics come through clearly, albeit with a bit of background noise. The phone paired very quickly with an Aliph Jawbone Icon Bluetooth headset and even triggered Google's quite comprehensive voice command suite with Bluetooth, which is a rare find on an Android phone. We're still working on the battery rundown tests, and will report our results as soon as they're available.
The G2 works on T-Mobile's and international 3G networks, as well as 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. The G2 is also T-Mobile's first HSPA+ phone, capable of HSPA+ 14.4 speeds. Using even faster HSPA+ 21 modems, I've achieved speeds of up to 6.72 megabits down in New York City. With the G2, I got a pretty consistent 2.0 megabits down. That's faster than most 3G systems, but not on a par with the speeds I've seen from Sprint's 4G phones or from T-Mobile's HSPA+ modems.
The phone runs on an 800MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230, ARM Cortex-A8 processor with Android 2.2. In my tests, the G2 felt quite speedy, and my benchmarks bore that out. Android 2.2 is so much faster than previous versions of the operating system, that it more than compensated for the difference in horsepower between the G2 and 1GHz phones running Android 2.1. I'm curious to see how the Samsung Vibrant ($199, 4 stars) compares once it gets its Android 2.2 upgrade later this year, though.
Software
Time for the tough truth: forget ever seeing "stock" Android again. The T-Mobile G2 runs Android 2.2, but it isn't the pure base build that techies are always looking for—it's been "enhanced" with a ton of bloatware and one big, missing feature.
But let's start with the good parts. The G2's Android 2.2 feels fast and sleek. Apps switch quickly and Web pages load promptly, unless they contain Flash, at which point they load with a considerable delay (but they do eventually show the Flash content). In my tests, Google Maps looked great and the GPS locked in quickly, whether using cell towers or satellites. Android 2.2 has all the checklist features most people are looking for. The relatively standard UI means the G2 will probably get updates more quickly than more-heavily-customized phones like the Samsung Vibrant.
This is the first handset with Google Voice preloaded, and the setup experience is smooth. After playingwith the settings a bit, you can use Google Voice to make all of your calls and handle your voicemail.
To give the best possible Google experience, Google preloaded all of its apps—not just the typical Maps and Gmail, but Places, Shopper, Earth, Sky Map, Latitude, Tracks, Finance, Listen, Translate, and Google Talk. And guess what? You can't delete any of them—not even Tracks. That's bloatware, right? I'd call that bloatware. Google's apps are often useful, but some of Google's partners do a better job than Google does with some aspects of Android. I prefer Samsung's address book and media players. Google currently integrates Facebook but not Twitter, the music player has some problems with artist and album tags, and the video player is labeled "Gallery," which is just wrong.
T-Mobile, meanwhile, has removed Android 2.2's ability to tether or act as a wireless hotspot—though the carrier has said it may restore it in an update.
Multimedia
The G2 is a good media phone—it's just not as good as the Samsung Vibrant. The device has about 1.3GB of free internal memory, plus an 8GB memory card stuck under the battery. You can replace it with a card as large as 32GB if you'd like.
The phone comes with doubleTwist (free, 4 stars) preloaded to sync music and videos with PCs and Macs. The stock Android music and video players do the job, but they're a little confusing. The music player could handle all of my AAC, MP3, WMA, and even OGG tracks, but lost some album and artist names. The video player could play videos up to 640 by 480 in MPEG4 and H.264, but it crashed when trying to play HD, DIVX or XVID videos. Music and video both sounded fine through wired and Altec Lansing BackBeat Bluetooth headphones.
The G2's YouTube client had some trouble loading HQ videos, even over Wi-Fi. Standard quality videos played smoothly, but they looked very low-res.
The 5-megapixel camera is a good representation of a phone of the G2's class. Photos were sharp enough, though I saw a bit of softness when I zoomed all the way in. Shutter lag, at 0.9 seconds, was a bit longer than I'd like, but not unbearable. I didn't see low-shutter-speed blur in low-light photos, which is great. The video camera records wobbly 720p HD video at 24 frames per second (15fps in low-light conditions) and smoother standard-resolution 720-by-480 video at the same frame rate.
Conclusions
Here's an easy proclamation: The G2 is the best smartphone with a keyboard on T-Mobile. If you like the tap-tap-tap of physical keys, the G2's speedy Android style, excellent messaging software and top-notch Web browser make it a pleasure to use. The phone is much faster and classier than its main keyboarded competitor, the myTouch 3G Slide ($179.99, 3.5 stars). There are also specific features on the G2, like voice dialing over Bluetooth, that aren't available on its main competitor, the Samsung Vibrant.
While the Vibrant and the T-Mobile G2 are both Editors' Choice winners (one for smartphone with a physical keyboard, the other without), I still prefer the Samsung Vibrant. The Vibrant has an even faster processor, better multimedia skills, stronger social-networking integration, and it's noticeably lighter. Both are top-of-the-line smartphones#151;your choice should be based on your form- factor preference—but either will serve you well.
