Monday, March 09, 2009

T-Mobile G1 Update: Don't bother, it sucks

I don't know what T-Mobile are playing at, but the news the other day that there was a firmware update coming to the Google G1 "over the air" did get me excited. I was rather looking forward to the Cupcake updates that would give me a virtual keyboard (just for texting) so I didn't have to pop out the keyboard.

So just before the weekend I woke to discover my G1 saying "Update available" and like a boy with a new toy I quickly hit "OK". Once done could I find the changes? Nope. I struggled to figure out what was different, then I discovered that there were some tweaks to the Market place when updates to installed applications were available.

Was there a virtual keyboard? Was this Cupcake? No. Also it seems that unlike in the available Andoird codebase T-Mobile are still not letting me choose to install apps on the SD card - so I'm wasting 2G of space. Worse than that, T-Mobile appear to have turned what was a largely stable and relaible phone (poor battery life excluded) into a half-brick unstable lump of plastic and circuitry.

In the last three days I have had more crashes than Windows 95. Solid and stable applications from the Market, such as the Telegraph app, the Weather Channel app, and Slashdot Reader have pretty much become unsuable - the phone locks and I need to reset it.

Worse still the phone will randomly and inexplicably lose all signal. I then have to manually search for T-Mobile again and select it as the operator, or alternatively reset the bloody thing.

If you've got a G1 and it offers you the update then I would say don't bother. It used to be a great phone. Now it sucks. If anyone from T-Mobile is reading this, I'm starting to wish I had got the Blackberry Curve instead. Any chance of a swap now that's you've broken my phone?

8 comments:

Guido Fawkes said...

Think the Blackberry Bold is best of breed. My Xperia is a piece of fabulous hardware, shite Windows Mobile OS.

Think I'll be migrating back to Blackberry.

dizzy said...

Bold is too chunky for my liking compared to Curve.

Recusant said...

Have just dumped the Bold today for a Curve. Bold eats battery power and has an annoying tendency to drop calls.

Anonymous said...

The chunky Bold compensates better if you have a small penis. Your 'little' secret is out now, Guido.

Anonymous said...

I always thought Guido's secret was that he was gay (his blog is obsessed with man-on-man action) but perhaps you have hit the (tiny) nail on the head with this! No wonder he's so angry!

Ed said...

Go Storming with the BB Storm guys. Why try be so Bold by Curving yourselves around an Android, just Storm I say.

[Ok, Rim, where is my CD$20k? A deal is a deal huh!]

Rob Fenwick said...

My G1 update is working without a problem, but I was equally irritated that this wasn't Cupcake - looks like Vodafone customers will get Cupcake first with the HTC Magic.

dizzy said...

Youve just tempted fate. Mark my words. Of the two people to say "mine is fine" each have changed their tune and experienced problems! :)