The T-Mobile Android G1

A smart-phone that helps you travel

by Lucy Komisar

We were driving on U.S. 1 from Key West to the Miami Airport after a week of sun and tennis and Caribbean food and wanted to stop along the way at a restaurant overlooking the water that we had discovered a few years before. Except we couldn’t remember the town or the name. So I picked up the T-Mobile Android G1 smart phone and said (or thought), ok, just how smart are you!

I touched the screen icon for the map program, I pulled out the querty keyboard and hit the key for search and typed “seafood restaurant.” (I would not have a smart phone without a slide-out keyboard.) We were near Marathon Key, and I didn’t recognize any of the names that appeared on the list for Marathon and nearby islands. So we drove on and I tried again. And suddenly there it was on the screen! “Lazy Days” in Islamorada. With address and phone number. Eureka! I called and reserved. And ten minutes later we were sitting on the outdoor balcony of a charming 2-story house that served up fresh fish along with a view of beach, an anchor thrown into the sand, some green palms and the sea.

Smart phones are gadgets that could become indispensible to travelers. Let me tell you more about how it helped me.

Starting out in New York waiting for the airport bus and on the ride to LaGuardia Airport, I checked my email. I love not having downtime. Later, as the plane doors shut, I emailed the friend who was going to pick me up in Miami that the plane appeared to be on time.

On arrival at the Miami airport, I wondered how the GPS would work, so even though my companion had a regular GPS unit in the car, I opened the map program, clicked on “location” so it would zero in on where I was, and then keyed in our destination: Key West. A little blue dot started moving along the map. It would arrive in Key West.

I checked into options and discovered that instead of the linear street map of the style we are familiar with, I could get a satellite Google-earth style view of surroundings: actual photos of streets and buildings, woods and waterways. Well, after all, G1 stands for Google, which designed the operating software. We checked out a hotel in South Beach we might like to stay in next year and got not only a perfect siting but an exact photo of the place.

But let’s get back to getting there. If you have T-Mobile G1 Android you may be able to retire your map and compass.

You can put in destinations to get route directions. When I touched a small box in the bottom right corner of the map program, I could see written instructions, separated by each turn: “here/go here.” With my fingers or the trackball, I could move the map to see more of the surrounding or where we were headed.

During some of the 3-hour ride, I checked my email. I had put in the specs for several accounts. Gmail came through one program (again, this is Google), and the others through an Outlook set-up. My only complaint was the spam – there’s not a good enough blocker yet.

Alas, there are no turn-by-turn voice instructions. I had gone surfing through Android Market for free applications and downloaded Andnav/ Android navigation which was supposedly a more sophisticated GPS program, but it turned out to work only for 8 countries, none them the U.S.

But I had a surprise and a laugh when we decided to stop for lunch at The Rusty Anchor, on Stock Island, just before Key West. The driver’s fancy GPS was wrong on where to turn and my Mobile-G1 was right! And important while driving, you can search Google Maps using your voice.

I also tried the web browser to check some favorite websites.  I got them, so, it was fine if I needed to check something particular, but too slow for someone used to broadband or even dialup browsing.

In Key West, I discovered the advantages of the phone. I had directed my landline calls to the cell, and had easily imported my Gmail contacts to the phone. Then I had to just touch a name to call. And when calls came in, they registered permanently on a list, so I could touch those then or later to return calls.

It’s very nice, especially out of the country, that the G1 can run Skype (a free Android Marketplace program), so if you’re at a hot spot, you can make calls without using up minutes or – abroad -- big bucks. There’s an icon you touch to turn wifi on and off to save battery power.

I had a busy schedule, attending sessions at the Key West Literary Seminar and liked the calendar app that specified times and places. You enter information on your computer into Gmail, and it pops up on the phone calendar, which opens at a touch. Plus, reminders came as Gmail.

And I found it convenient to have a built-in megapixel camera that was always with me and didn’t add to the weight of what I was already carrying. I didn’t use the music app, but I suppose many of you will store your favorites and play them.

I also loved getting an immediate weather report that popped up whenever I touched the weather icon – and seemed to know exactly where I was!

But there were a few disappointments. The place where I stayed had no wifi, and the G1 has no tethering – ie it doesn’t work as a modem for a computer -- so I had to use dialup for my laptop. I found a tethering program on the Android Marketplace, but I could never make it work. The G1 needs workable tethering!

The touch screen is erratic, or maybe I just didn’t properly calibrate the pressure of my touch. When icons didn’t react to touch, I used the trackball.

The Bluetooth is only for earphones; you can’t attach a folding keyboard. I wanted that not just for writing emails, but to use with the text program, another free Marketplace add-on. I can’t write more than a few lines with thumb typing.

The phone and its case are handsome. And you can customize the home screen with the programs you choose and then just touch them to start. You can even open a second home screen for programs that don’t fit on the first.

The programs are not yet perfect. The map search threw up some places I sought, but not all. When I input “wine,” it didn’t display my neighborhood wine store. When I asked for the nearest hospital, it ignored the one down the block.  

And I wish there was a way to mark and delete spam and other emails in groups, instead of individually.

I expect some of these problems will be fixed by new applications that are being invented even as I write this. And when updates to your programs are available, you get notices.

Here, for example, are other good features:

Video and voice recording.

Translator translates words and paragraphs of text using Google’s language translation service.

Google Maps now has transit and walking directions using public transportation in over 250 U.S. cities.

cab4me light helps you get a cab. Select your pickup location on a map or from your contacts, cab4me light provides a list of cab companies serving the area.

ParkMark remembers where you parked. Press a button to note the location of your car using the GPS, On return, the phone uses Google Maps to direct you to the car.

World Traffic Cams looks at over 6,000 traffic cameras all over the world.

Tele Nav GPS Navigator with full color turn-by-turn navigation for a $100 a year

Smart phones like the T-Mobile Android G1 are a wonderful boon for travelers!

Photos by Lucy Komisar