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Ask YC: G1, IPhone or BlackBerry?
So, I'm in the market for a new phone. I live on Gmail and G-Cal, so I need something that works well with those.
I'd really like something that has a terminal client (think PuTTY), so I can log into my server if I need to. Does that exist?
I'm leaning towards the G-1. Any thoughts?
- alaskamiller 18y agoBlackberry is out. On the iPhone gmail and gcal webapp work prety well. iPhone's Mail.app integrates with Gmail seamlessly but Gcal requires third party software to sync -- I find BusySync on MacOS X to be the best option. There's an iPhone terminal app that kind of works but not fully featured enough to let you manage a server purely on the phone. G1 has homecourt advantage with Gmail and Gcal integration but cruddy design and a few other minor annoyances.
- vlad 18y ago1) I have the latest beta of Mac OS X on my iPhone, and it has some unreleased updates to some apps that would make you regret getting the Google phone as soon as the next official operating system update comes out. Get the iPhone. 2) Google Mail has a web app, but more importantly, the Mail app on the phone supports it out of the box. 3) Google Calendar can be used on the iPhone using the third-party service nuevasync, in free beta. 4) Regarding a terminal app, a web app might exist that does something similar.
- procrastitron 18y agoI don't have a G-1, but I've been playing around with the emulator lately and studying the architecture, and I find it to be really impressive. Also there does appear to be a third-party SSH app (http://code.google.com/p/connectbot/ http://code.google.com/p/connectbot/), but I don't have any experience with it. I think that right now the IPhone is more polished. However, the G-1 is more open, so you may be better off with that in the long term.
- hardik 18y agoI know this is gonna sound a bit, uh, odd. But have you considered Nokia N79? I am also in the market for a new phone (ever since my iPhone got a deadstrip) and I am leaning towards N79. As regards you needs for Gmail, GCal, Putty, etc I have not looked into it but have a feeling that S60 apps for these would probably be available. The thing with S60 apps is that they are not half as polished as iphone ones when it comes to UI but some are very good at what they claim to do.
- SingAlong 18y agoWould like to make a point. G1 doesnt have a head phone socket! After reading all the reviews the G1 sounds to me like its still half polished. And as someone else suggested, get a phone that supports wifi and s60 3rd edition(this supports 1,2 editions too). There are a lot of good s60 apps. My N70 is s60 2nd edition and its more than useful. There's even and IRC client!!! Meanwhile if u wanna type code on the go, then i would recommend a bluetooth keyboard addon too instead of using the phone's keyboard. And dont choose the N70. The keys are a bit small and conjested. I sometimes endup pressing the red cancel button instead of '3'. P.S: this post is from Opera Mini using gprs on my N70. I frequent HN on this. Gmail mobile at m.gmail.com works fine too.
- lacker 18y agoThe G1 does have a headphone jack - it just isn't the normal shape. You plug your headphones into the mini usb. It comes with some headphones that fit in there, so the headphone thing isn't really an issue unless you want to use your own special headphones.
- SingAlong 18y agoOh! Thats nice. I'm a music freak and use my phone to listen to a lot of music. But is the g1 available in countries where tmobile isnt present?
- lacker 18y agoDefinitely either the G-1 or the iPhone. For email on the G-1, since you have background processes, a little icon appears in the screen when you get new email or instant messages, and you can swipe it down, switch applications to chat for a bit, and then hit the "back" button to switch applications back to what you were doing. So it really makes it possible to do something else with your phone while you are carrying on an email or IM conversation. Same goes for calendar notifications. For this sort of thing I think the iPhone's one-button, one-task-at-a-time interface really hurts. For general applications the iPhone is much better - there aren't that many applications in the G1 market yet. In general the larger screen and pinch gestures make it easier to use the web and maps on an iPhone. For general operating system, I'm torn, because I like the extra buttons on the G1 (notably "back", "home", and "contacts" versus the iphone only having "home") so you can be doing something, send off an email, then resume what you were doing. But the UI is more intuitive on the iPhone, there are many little fluidly animated bits. Hard to say... I have a G1, have used many friends' iPhones, and am tempted to get an iPod Touch so I can fool around with both of them.