Picked one of these up the other day because I had a look at the phones Orange had on offer for me and they were pretty much crap, more than that; they wanted me to pay to upgrade my phone even though I would be starting a new contract, I was having any of that so I jumped ship.

I got it pretty much next day delivery and have been playing with it ever since. So far I’m quite impressed by the email applications and some of the fun games. I love having a full physical QWERTY keyboard and it’s nice to be able to scroll through my contacts easily. Read on for my likes/dislikes.

What I like about it
• Big touch sceen
• QWERTY Keyboard
• Nicely integrated email clients
• Text message conversation layout
• Interface is very customisable and intuitive
• Youtube App
• Great browser
• Android Market
• Some really nice free games on the Market
• Email/Text/Application notifications are convenient, unobtrusive and easy to manage
• Calendar sync from google calendar
• Nice visual phone lock system
• As long as you have your contacts’ addresses a few clicks can get you directions to/from any of your contacts’ addresses.

What I don’t like about it
• Sub-par battery life
• No push email service
• There are many new features in Cupcake (the latest OS update) but I cannot enjoy them.
• There’s applications I cannot use because I’m unlucky and might not get the latest OS version until the 25th.
• In the UK OS the IM client does not have AIM/YAHOO/MSN but the American one does 🙁
• No multi touch

I was originally gunning for a Blackberry curve so some of my likes/dislikes are based on that. Overall the G1 is very versatile and I would recommend it to anyone who loves gadgets. I also enjoy the conversation style text messaging, who needs IM when you have unlimited texts and an IM like interface. It’s also nice not to be interrupted by notifications and to be able to look through all the current notifications right over the top of what you’re doing.

What I’m going to do now is just add a few of the main questions I had before getting the G1 just in case anyone needs the answers too:

Q: Can you set up more than one email/gmail account on the phone?
A: Yes, the phone comes with a general POP/IMAP client aswell as the default gmail client.

Q: Does the G1 include an MSN/AIM/YAHOO messenger client?
A: The UK version of Android only includes Google Talk, The US version includes MSN/AIM/YAHOO and Google Talk.

Q: Does the G1 have a “conversation” layout for text messages?
A: Yes.

And of course just a few images: