Consumer advice time! I need a new phone, and I'm struggling to compare the merits of the G1 on T-Mobile against the iPhone 3G S on O2. Has anyone used one, or both, and if so what do you think? What does the G1 do that the iPhone doesn't, and vice versa?

I have an iPod touch and I love it, it is the single most-used gadget I've ever owned. My only concern is that I need more storage capacity, 8 GB isn't nearly enough for all my apps, audiobooks, podcasts and videos. So this does make me wonder whether it would be worth it to get an iPhone, when by iPod touch has almost the same functionality. Maybe a Google phone would be a cool combo?

The big selling point for the iPhone/iPod touch is the vast availability of third party applications, so that's why I'm only comparing the G1 to the iPhone as I'm only interested in devices that allow third party app development. Are there other iPhone competitors I'm unfairly ignoring?

In the UK, the iPhone is only on O2 and the G1 is only on T-Mobile, which is annoying, but it means that comparing the phone and provider is all part of the same package.

Well there's the Palm Pre which should be on O2 by the end of the year. The G1 is okay, but it is slow.

You can get a developer version of the G1 which I believe is unlocked. I have the G1, I've never had an iPhone, so can't really compare it. But the qwerty keyboard is great, without looking ugly like the blackberry one. There are a lot of apps, but I haven't delved into them greatly. Currently I only have a news app, GPS info thingumajig, music player, file manager, notepad, wifi detector and a couple of Doom emulators. I'm looking to get one of the better GPS apps at some point. Uses a microsd card, which now come in 16/32gig I believe, I need to get a larger card so I can start putting more music on it (only a 7 hour trance mix on current card).

Downsides- the GPS uses google maps, so falls over if you're out woop-woop and you have no reception. There is a 3rd party GPS which loads maps into memory that I need to get hold of sometime. Also battery life is abysmal. Touchscreen seemed a little hesitant when I first got it, but it seems to have bedded in now.

Yeah, it's the flick-out keyboard on the G1 that seems especially useful. I've gotten fairly used to typing on the iPod touch touchscreen keyboard, and I can do it quite fast even with my fat fingers, but I imagine it might be a little annoying for typing quick text messages.

You'll be pleased to know that most my posts on this forum are written while I'm on the toilet. That may explain a lot.

Quite appropriate, though.

iphone

iPhone

I'd get the iPhone. You already have the experience of using the touch so it'll be an easy transition. The G1 is a nice device, but the keyboard is pretty shoddy (IMO). The 3G S also sports more RAM and a faster processor than the G1. Just coming from the 3G to the 3G S it is a significant speed bump.

"And that's why you're so full of ****!"

Come on guys, I totally set you up for that one.

Really? It's actually an improvement? I didn't really see what the 'S' did. I don't really notice my iPod Touch being especially slow. I presume there's no iPod Touch S yet.

Is there any update to the iPhone or the G1 in the pipeworks any time soon? Would I be better off waiting?

Palm Pre is AMAZING for homebrew, hacking and development, if that interests you. Otherwise it's a good phone in many respects, but it's something of a beta product. If they refresh it next year, it'll probably be way more

Things are a lot more fluid on the 3G S, I also notice my FreeMemory app now has around 128MB free at any given time (the 3G hovered around 30MB free). The iPhone has been updated in some way every year since its release. You can expect another update around June/July next year but I doubt it would be that significant.

The G1 seems to be following suit since they just came out with their updated phone on T-Mobile here in the US (called myTouch). On this update they've done away with the physical keyboard.

Going off what Emon said I think you should consider iPhone vs. Pre rather than iPhone vs. G1. The Pre is a solid device that I see surpassing the G1 and Android - but for that I'd wait for the second gen. Pre.

iPod touch doesn't have phone, sms, push, etc running in the background. Also I believe the 2nd gen iPod ran at ~530mhz, where the iPhone was at 412mhz. The 3G S is running at ~600mhz, plus twice the RAM.

I have a G1.

I'd say if you are comparing the G1 and the 3G S, go with the iphone. It's got more recent hardware, and the performance boost from the extra RAM and cpu is nice. The G1 is smooth when you have nothing running, but if you multitask things will get slow very quickly. This, and the fact that you can only use the phone's memory to store apps are probably the largest issues with the phone. But apps don't really take a whole lot of space anyways.

The iPhone is a much better music player. For some retarded reason, the G1 uses its mini-usb port to play music, and you need an adapter if you want to use standard 3.5mm stereo headphones. The quality isn't all that great, the media player is very much functional but ugly. As much as I -HATE- iTunes, it's better than nothing when it comes to syncing software, and the G1 has nothing to help you sync with your library.

Those are my perceived weaknesses of the phone. When all is said and done, I still love the little thing. The interface is great - everything is very fluid, the transitions when multitasking are great, and you can pretty much copy/touch/store phone numbers from anywhere, or URLs, or anything like that. It's great as a PDA with very nice contact/calendar sync withe GMail. IMO it matches the iphone in terms or general usefulness and user experience.

The G1's keyboard is awesome. It's very easy to start typing on - it doesn't have the learning curve of a touchscreen keyboard. There are plenty of keyboard shortcuts that you can use to zip around the phone, if you are willing to learn all of them (not all are very intuitive). Physical keyboard absolutely destroys the iphone's on-screen, and you can use an on-screen keyboard on the G1 as well if you like.

From what I've seen, the battery life for both devices is very much dependent on the usage of the phone. If you use your phone alot, you are probably going to have to charge every night, for both phones. Data/wifi/gps are major battery killers, so if you use this functionality regularly it will drain the battery very quickly. I'd say both are pretty equal here - if you have either device set to fetch e-mail regularly or change settings based on GPS position, you can watch the battery life slip away quite quickly over the course of a day.

If I ignore my bias against apple/itunes for their stance on development, and the snob stereotype that I have firmly planted in my head for apple users, I'd probably recommend even the previous generation of iphone over the current G1. Most people are going to like the iphone better, plain and simply. Add the extra speed of the 3GS and it's a better handheld, period. If you love physical keyboards and hate apple's stance on development for the app store, then the decision is easy as to which company you want to give your money to; I'm guessing that people like this are very few and far between.

I recently upgraded my 3G to a 3GS. Holy cow, it's like night and day.

What do you mean by apple's stance on development of the app store?

Maybe something to do with the complete failure of Apple in that regard, including blocking a dictionary for having words like a-s-s in it.

It's a very tightly controlled market. The process for getting an app approved and listed is, in my opinion, ridiculous. Apple pretty much reserves the right to take anything down at any time. If you have a good idea for an app, there's no way to tell if it will be approved until you actually try to submit it to the app store. If it's a good idea, Apple will take it off the app store so they can make their own app to provide the functionality. It's very strictly controlled, and they will deny apps to prevent competition with their own apps/products/anything that can make them money. When apps are denied, reasons are not always given - there have been many cases of apps being approved and then later taken down because Apple decided they didn't want to have it on their app store.

Obviously you can circumvent this very easily by putting your app on Cydia or, by hosting it as a web app optimized for mobile browsers, but I just don't really like the way they've handled the app store so far that I wouldn't really be comfortable developing something for it. I think it's kind of sad that most people just take it for granted - the whole app store thing is a huge step forward for software development in terms of exposure, but a massive step backward in that the reins are held tightly by a corporation that is more interested in making money than letting us build cool stuff with their toys.

Hmm, yeah, that does suck, I didn't know about that. That certainly does stifle innovation. The app store is already flooded with a lot of ****, it's pretty hard to navigate as it is. Is the G1 app store equivalent any better for developers? Am I more likely to get interesting and innovative apps on the G1?

If you're looking for a useful app you'll find one on either. Generally if you know what you're looking for on Android or Apple's Store you'll find it relatively easy. Apple's Store is saturated with a lot more crap, but it doesn't even phase me because I generally know exactly what I'm looking for when I get an app.

if you can wait iPhone wont be tied to o2 for much longer which means I can start selling it again and make a decent profit for once. Woohoo

But seriously I love my iPhone its great, I was very anti iPhone just wanted to have a phone that made calls texts etc, after playing with the phones that the guys at work had It just was amazing.

It just seems a better product, well thought out and the software and app store is brill.

I had the iPhone 3G for 8 or so months, and wound up getting rid of it for the G1, mostly due to financial reasons, and the switch back to t-mobile was highly beneficial for me.

My G1 pros and Cons (I'm trying to avoid things that have been said already):

• The G1 just got visual voicemail, which is nice, but obviously not a major selling point.
  
• Android market does have a lot of apps on it, but still pales in comparison to the App Store, and for good reason, since the G1 isn't as popular. But generally for any one good useful app on the iPhone, there's a good G1 equivalent. The G1 is open source, so there's a little more variety, and publishing to the market only costs 25 dollars, whereas it costs ~99 dollars for the App Store (last time I checked anyway), which ultimately means more free applications and less ads (that I've noticed at least).
  
• Not sure about in the UK, but in the US, the G1's data plan is 5 dollars cheaper.
  
• The G1 is open source, and developers have a bit more freedom as to what they can modify and create. The Widgets are nice, and can be useful.
  
• The G1 has voice search (including google internet search, and searching the device) and it works very well, although the voice dialing seems as though it could use improvement.
  
• If you have Google Voice, there's a voice app for the G1, which was rejected for the iPhone, but will likely be posted eventually.
  
• I like push GMail, and the syncing of my gmail contacts and everything is nice as well.
  
• The iPhone has a real facebook app that's free. The mobile site works OK on the G1, but I miss the app. THere's a paid app called Bloo that's supposed to be really nice, but I haven't justified paying for it yet.
  
• Youtube is nicer on the G1, IMO, since you have the ability to upload videos with the video camera.
  
• The G1 also has MMS, which, as I understand it, the iPhone still doesn't have (in the us) thanks to AT&T dragging their feet.
  
• As for the battery life, my G1 lasts me a day and a half to two days based on usage, whereas my iPhone would be 1 day at most.
  
• The unlock pattern, as opposed to a PIN is cool, a nice twist on an old feature.
  
• Not all the apps have to be on the home screen. You have 3 screens you can fill with ~16 apps per screen, then there's a menu that holds everything else, plus you can make folders.

As for the iPhone:

• The hardware is definitely faster.
  
• There's more apps on the AppStore
  
• Of course there's the iPod, which definitely blows the G1 music player out of the water, but that's not to say the G1 isn't good for music.
  
  Can't think of anything else to add for the iPhone, other than what was done for the iPhone by apple, has been done well. Third party apps can be iffy sometimes.

To close, I'll say this. I LOVED my iPhone when I had it used it all the time, without ever paying for an app, except for one game. Now that I've had my G1 for a while, I don't miss my iPhone at all, except for the iPod, which I have separately.

I thought with the inclusion of the video recording on the 3G S, it could upload to YouTube?

3GS can upload recorded videos directly to YouTube.

*edit*
Doh, too slow.

Well, I suppose I stand (or sit, to be more accurate) corrected. No experience with the 3G S.

Thanks for the correction!

What does this mean?

Also do you never have the problem of touching buttons on the screen with your face when you're talking?

I believe the iPhone, like the Pre, has a proximity sensor that turns off the screen when it is close to your face.

He means the unlock isn't a numerical code but a pattern you draw on the screen.

I'm still over here on CDMA land (Verizon). I plan to jump ship as I'm tired of Verizon's buisness practices. I would like to go with an iPhone but I still keep hearing bad things about AT&T. One of my good friends is on Sprint and he dishes out $100 for data, unlimited text/pix, etc. It sounds like a good deal. Anyone c/d this?

I pay about $90/mo for my phone. That's with just 450 minutes and "Unlimited" data and text. Its fairly pricey.

AT&T sucks in terms of how they treat their customers (i.e. delaying MMS for iPhone while all their other phones can handle them). Signal wise I get good reception practically everywhere I am.

My Pre's plan is $70/m (Before the charges and crap) for unlimited everything except minutes, which are 450.

They have an unlimited everything including minutes for $100/m. That's Sprint, by the way, and they have a roaming agreement with Verizon.

Has anyone cracked their iPhone, using jailbreaking software? Is this likely to break it? If I get an iPhone I might be tempted to jailbreak my iPod touch, just for fun.

Bricking your phone is practically an impossiblity now with the new jailbreaking/unlocking methods. If anything goes wrong you can just restore your iPhone to factory firmware. My iPhone 3G S is jailbroken currently and I've gone back to the factory firmware with little issue. I've also unlocked all my friends' iPhones for T-Mobile.