I got my phone shipped to me by DHL at a total cost of S$800, and as a result I’m a registered Google Android developer now with a Google Dev Phone 1. It was delivered to me a couple of weeks ago.

First off, you can read about the build of the phone etc. all over the net, so I won’t bother rehashing all that. Here are some quick impressions of special things.

Speed: FAST. So fast that in the rare times when the phone is doing something else, I thought it had hanged. In fact, the phone itself thought that it had hanged and prompted me to decide whether to force the app to close, or just wait. But usually, just when the message appears, the phone starts responding again.

One handed operation: Marginal. Drivers have commented that this is not really a one-handed phone, but can be marginally used as one, because sometimes one needs to use the full QWERTY keyboard to enter text and you can’t use a virtual keyboard yet (until and unless the app guy puts a virtual keyboard into his app).

Screen: Just beautiful.

Cam: What do you expect from a lousy small lens and a lousy small CCD? In any case, it’s passable. Those who want nice pics, note that the cheapest digital camera on the market outperforms the phone camera by orders of magnitude.

Keypress feel–passable. There’s a feeling of high quality.

Battery life: Nope, no good, if you use the phone full functionality with all wireless connections on all the time, and the screen on 50 percent of the time, the battery will last from 9am to 9pm thereabouts.

Touchscreen response: As good as the iPhone.

Pocketability: Yeah, you can put it into your pocket without the need to buy a new pair of pants every quarter. It’s not a Nokia Communicator, but it’s substantially heavier than my old M600 though.

I’ve touched on all the physical aspects of  the phone, why not its operation?

Because the operation of the phone, the workflow, the software, is all replaceable. Don’t like the way it handles SMS? Then download ChompSMS for free and you have a clone of the iPhone’s SMS program with the green bubbles and stuff. Don’t like the browser? Never mind, there’s Opera Mini and STEEL as browser alternatives, and all three of them work very well.

Don’t like the camera? Well this phone allows developers to create incredible addons to the phone. Like the Snap Photo app which actually adds “stability control” to the camera, by using the phone’s built-in accelerometer to detect when you are shaking the least, and then take a picture. Sure there’s lag, but I’m illustrating to you the most wonderful thing about the Android phone I have–software is everything, and anybody can make any software for the phone without Google’s approval. Which is sure better than Apple’s draconian control on the software you can run on the iPhone.

A native Gmail client is included with the phone, but the Javascript mobile Gmail and Google hosted mail works great too, so much so that one might consider using the web application for everything. Google Reader works great in mobile browser mode.

Bottomline is this: With this phone, I’ve found myself not logging on to a PC for the week I was away, even though I had a laptop and ready access to the desktop. The phone makes Gmail so convenient and Google Talk great, the keyboard is so usable and the screen is big enough for me. Anything short of huge spreadsheets and databases, for me, this phone is preferable to the notebook or PC for social and recreational Internet stuff.

Migration to the phone has been painless. I just logged in to my Google account and a large number of contacts just flew to the phone over the air. I was using Google Calendar before, so scheduler information was not a problem. It was totally painless.

Multitasking–something which the iPhone does not have. It’s totally essential, the ability to run multiple apps at once on the phone. And it works great, even running six applications at a time. I am utterly impressed.

Would I get any other phone? NO. This is it. I love the Google phone. I would recommend it to anyone–it’s not a crazy geek phone, applications are easy to install, and free for the moment. You need not be a geek to use it. A good user could get the best out of this phone in a couple of days.

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