Amid general buzz over T-Mobile’s release of the My Touch — the second collaboration between HTC and Google — the question has been raised of whether it will prove significantly enhanced over its popular prequel, the G1. The advance consensus, gleaned from user forums and phone specs, seems to be that they are primarily the same phone, with the My Touch having better life and memory, and exclusive touch screen functionality.
While many current G1 users have grappled with short battery life and would definitely not dismiss this enhancement as second-rate, many G1 users also prefer having the option of a physical QWERTY keypad in addition to the touch screen. In fact, this fully realized either/or prospect for input (while it doesn’t allow the phone-in-case to blend quietly into its owner’s silhouette) has to be one of its real advantages over the iPhone.
While the offer of keypad and touch entry is not unique to the purported iPhone Killer, the G1 has avoided the pratfalls of certain other models offering this choice by not condensing either mode in order to offer the other. The keypad on many a touchscreen smartphone has manifested as a packed-solid affair with keys so small one would consider using a stylus to type on it, so as not to press two or three keys neighboring the one you intended to select. Even though more and more phones are being manufactured now to stylistically swerve around this problem (see HTC’s Touch Pro2, slated for release August 12), it has been the G1’s combination of this style and its well-stocked Android interface that made early reviewers rank it in contest with the iPhone.
If Android were to take the path of phasing out the physical keypad in further models for the sake of slimming down, would Google’s line up of Little (okay, Not-So-Little) Phones The Could cease to significantly stand out from the pack?
A sizable faction of data hounds have remained hesitant to allow Android into the realm of Apple, claiming that Android’s many similar features have not congealed into a true step ahead. While certain Android features currently awaiting their stage cue (such as Sheepa) may prove themselves shortly following their release and implementation, the new design may simultaneously level a bit of the Android enthusiasm for those who view the keypad as an institute of convenience for texting, gmailing and filling out that easy-access Google search field time and again.
