The T-Mobile G2, this is not the (An)Droid you are looking for (Updated)

Recently, my good friends at T-mobile let me have about an hour and a half to play with the new G2 from HTC, so I wanted to give you the lowdown from a Droid user perspective.

The phone itself has a nice size to it, and the keyboard layout is also very easy to use. The device itself runs pretty well and I did not notice any lag or slowdowns as I put it thru its paces. The screen is nice and crisp and the touchscreen input is on par with some of the best devices out there. It is pretty much standard Android vanilla fare as far as the UI is concerned and as I was out getting 4 kids glasses I was able to text, browse, and email with little trouble while keeping track of my small army.

Sounds good right? Well not all of it was good in my experience. The keyboard while nice has a big caveat as it is hinged and not in a good way. The hinge is made of a non ferrous metal which will keep it from rusting, but for being brand new it had way too much play for my liking. It seemed sturdy but I foresee people snapping this thing in two. Also as others have confirmed, the memory issue bothers me. The 4 gigabyte internal memory is shared between the system and apps with around 2 gigabytes left being pretty much unusable.  The phone itself is expandable to 32 gigabytes thru the sd card so yes there is storage to be had, but in my opinion and having owned another phone with shared internal memory, I am not a huge fan. I also have found that the power button being located on the side is more of a pain, and restricts quick access to turning the screen on. (I am left handed by the way, so you right handers may have better results.)

So to wrap it up, if you are not already on Big Red or have a significant other on T-mobile it may be worth a look. I say this apprehensively because unless you are very careful I see a trip back to your local carrier for a replacement. Please anyone who may decide this an option, I implore you to PURCHASE THE INSURANCE. That being said Once fully rooted (yes I know of the temporary root that has been achieved.) This may be the next cult following for the non-VZW crowd and I enjoyed my time with the phone, but will not be giving this another look. In todays smartphone market ease of use and durability should be much higher than the G2’s current offer.

UPDATE:  Just after MrPicolas posted this, news broke that this phone has a rootkit included which can wipe your phone back to its original state should you tamper with it and put say, a custom ROM or something on it.  Basically any custom or user change made to the source code can be overwritten each time the phone is booted.  I think we all know that the majority of the excitement behind this device was the fact that it ran a pretty vanilla Android, but after hearing this news, I’d say our “locked” bootloader is nothing. (Via:  News America)

Thoughts everyone?