G1 Limitations

The Nokia Blog is posting an article by a tech writer who tried the Android G1 and gave up.

Obviously the site is biased, but still it is instructive to see what blogger Chris Walters hated: the camera build quality, camera quality its looks, and the carrier lock-in. He did find the G1 user interface much more elegant than S60, particularly for how messaging is handled.

He also liked the nascent App Market more than either the commercial (Download!) or free (MOSH) Nokia download services. However, he doesn’t analyze the app store capabilities to the same degree as (say) Michael Mace.

His conclusion:

After a week with the G1, my conclusion was that Android is loaded with promise, but the G1 represents a squandered opportunity for T-Mobile and HTC. I’m certain upcoming firmware updates will iron out kinds in the Android OS, and may even make the camera usable for basic snapshots, but you can’t fix ugly design or poor build quality over-the-air. The G1 is definitely not a smart phone, and with the lack of a headphone jack, decent speakers, or the ability to record video or take decent photos, it’s not even really a feature phone.

From the things he likes, I suspect he will like the 2.0 or 3.0 much better.