iPhone vs. G1

I spent 6 hours at the BIG Mall yesterday trying every cell phone and PDA in the place.  I tried the iPhone, G1, and all sorts of other smartphones and PDAs from Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.  None of them do what I need them to do.  Here’s what I need my cell phone to do:

• Text messaging
• Twitter
• Photo capture
• Ability to email photos
• Video capture
• Ability to upload video to Youtube
• Wordpress image upload
• Wordpress video embed (Youtube)
• Skype
• mp3 player

The main area where ALL the phones fail is in video capturing and uploading.  My 3-year-old Motorola cell phone has video, photo, and audio capture features.  The iPhone and G1 can only capture photos out of the box.  Why these two phones do not have video capture capabilities is beyond me.  The video image is already streaming digitally through the phone when you use the photo capture feature, why not capture 15-30 frames per second of video and encode it to MPEG?  Is it that tough?  How can my crappy 3-year-old cell phone out-perform both of these fancy, new devices?

The iPhone and the G1 operating systems are WAY more intuitive than the others.  Windows, Palm, and Blackberry operating systems were confusing and seemed chintzy, cheap, and slow.  The Windows OS, in particular, was particularly confusing. Both the iPhone and G1 provide simple touch-screen interfaces where you just touch the icon for “web browser” to search the web.  With the other operating systems, you need a working knowledge of all the buttons as well as some training to figure it out.  Even after being showed how to access the web on non-iPhone and G1 phones by the salesman at both the Verizon and T-Mobile stores, I was confused about how to access the web!  Some could blame me for a lack of knowledge or understanding of the respective operating systems, but I call it bad design.

The iPhone is nicer than all of the other phones I tried.  It feels solid and sturdy compared to the G1, which has a cheap plastic feel to it.  It also is the simplest phone, with only one tactile button.

The G1 tops the iPhone with its tactile keypad.  It is quite difficult and time consuming to type a message free of spelling errors on the iPhone, as my big fingers always press the wrong letters on the screen.  I end up having to use the delete key a lot.  The G1’s keypad is awesome.  Writing text messages and blog entries will be significantly easier with the G1.

On price, the G1 wins, hands-down.  At $70 per month, the iPhone rivals data/voice plans provided by Verizon and AT&T.  But T-Mobile’s offers sufficient voice and unlimited 3G data access for only $50 per month!  That’s a $240 savings every year (almost $500 over the course of your 2-year contract).

Here’s where I stand at present.  I have had a voice-only plan for the last 7 years with Verizon.  I have been happy with their voice coverage.  The only reason I am looking to upgrade my phone and plan is that I have become very interested in text messaging, live-blogging, and Twittering in real-time.  I am still debating whether or not it’s worth the $30-60 more per month to get this functionality in a phone. Any guidance or experience that you can provide with either of these two phones would be much appreciated!

Here’s a video showcasing and critiquing the features of the G1:

And here’s a Youtube video showcasing the differences between the iPhone and the new Blackberry:

And here’s a video showcasing the new features of the Wordpress iPhone App (version 1.2):