so disappointed!

[bradley1865]

Am I the only one annoyed with the G1? Can't read documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations or PDF files. No streaming media. No flash installed. No voice recording.
I was really hoping this phone was going to be for adults. Seems like it is just a
souped-up Sidekick. What gives HTC?

 

[Sundog]

I hear ya. I think it's very telling what their response was to the lack of an Outlook client, basically saying, oh, surely someone will write something.

I think that there should have been more preparation. Open source doesn't mean "here's an empty shell, put what you want in it".

I am excited about the platform but yes, a little disappointed in this phone.

 

[bradley1865]

By flash, I mean Macromedia Flash. Also, Can't even make text notes.

 

[porquepine]

I hear ya. I think it's very telling what their response was to the lack of an Outlook client, basically saying, oh, surely someone will write something.

I think that there should have been more preparation. Open source doesn't mean "here's an empty shell, put what you want in it".

I am excited about the platform but yes, a little disappointed in this phone.

Well I have to agree with you somewhat, my only luck is that I am tied to Gmail for everything already, so when the phone comes it will be a nice transition. However, for those of you that are not already using Google, I can understand the frustration. I have already voiced my concerns over the inability to view PDF and .doc etc on the new phone. I am praying that someone will develop something rather fast so I can use it in that manner. Basically I need to view documents, and the rest is just fun. The video is going to be somewhat expected.....are you telling me that if I go to cnn.com and click on a news clip it will not play it? I can care less about video recording cability personally.

 

[bradley1865]

Thanks Sundog. Thought I was the only one.

 

[Rob]

A shell and nothing else? I think the Android Developer Challenge and putting up millions and millions of dollars for App Development was a good start. Not to mention that there is an ADC2 coming up.

G1 owners are early adopters and while there is a lot of goodness that comes from that, you have to live with some of the shortcomings as well. All-in-all its a pretty darned good phone and its going to get better and better with each passing day as more and more phone's pop up on the market (and elsewhere).

Don't give up on it so quickly/easily...

 

[BandroiD]

I say give it till the end of the year and the Market will be as full of goodies as the App Store is, if not more.

 

[Sundog]

I wish that were true, but nothing but free apps will be available until "early first quarter 2009".

Don't get me wrong, Rob; love the phone, love the platform, I just wish for popularity's sake it was a bit more fleshed out, out of the box. Consumers aren't as patient as we are.

 

[ram100987]

it is impossible dor a company to satisfy everyone, how else would so many companies out there all doing big business, its because people want different things and like choice. instead of cramming this phone with a ton of junk most people wont use, they put just the most common apps and left the rest for you to pick and choose yourself and make your own choice. like it was said, the downfall of being an early adopter is that your list of app choices is a bit limited right now... but give it time. the hardware is there, now we just have to give developers time to code the kinda apps we want. just be patient buddy and youll get what you need

 

[sleebus.jones]

No streaming media.

Hmm, I wonder what that imeem app is? Oh yeah, it's streaming media. What's this youtube thing? Ah, streaming media.

Maybe you should fact-check more before hitting "new thread"

 

[Haze23]

You talk about a phone for kids....Your acting like kids. You didn't even investigate the phone you bought? You didn't try it out first? You just had to have lastest thing and now you can't work it the way you want. So sorry you can't see the big picture. If you wanted to get something that did speedsheet then by a laptop! This is a phone.... You can get any application you want to, just wait a day. If there is a demand it will be made, or.....Go return it and wait till the next time you pick it up and see what you missed out on. Thanks for leaving the party!

 

[david.orr]

You talk about a phone for kids....Your acting like kids. You didn't even investigate the phone you bought? You didn't try it out first? You just had to have lastest thing and now you can't work it the way you want. So sorry you can't see the big picture. If you wanted to get something that did speedsheet then by a laptop! This is a phone.... You can get any application you want to, just wait a day. If there is a demand it will be made, or.....Go return it and wait till the next time you pick it up and see what you missed out on. Thanks for leaving the party!

Really? This kind of response is pretty uncalled for.

I understand his concerns and they are valid. And I think, bradley, you are right that as things stand now its really not much more than a really really sweet sidekick. But people love sidekicks. So for the sake of selling phones to general consumers they are set. For selling to us power users, we know the potential and possibilities so we are happy to buy now (most of us) just to be apart of it from the beginning and have a say in the direction it goes.

I know these are my feelings and I am sure many others feel the same way.

 

[bradley1865]

Wow! I didn't realize I was hurting anyone with my opinions.
Regarding the streaming media, I mean that we cannot go to say a radio
station's website and stream their feed. Or watch the news we choose.
As far as doing my research is concerned, I got it from T-mobile on several
occasions that viewing documents etc. would not be a problem.
Not a problem out of the box. And seriously, how do you build a browser
that can't view websites with flash in this day and age? Just my opinion.

 

[chosen_1_4ever]

well, I am not going to dismiss anyone's issues with the phone, but I know for a fact (having owned a PS3) flash will come. Not some fake substitute, but it will come.

The ONLY defense we have for this phone is that it is open source. And the Dev community for ths platform is already HUGE. And right now the community is demanding the ability to open documents, view flash that isn't named youtube, and more streaming media abilities.

The beauty of it is that the dev community is large and if you want to make a name for yourself, then you create an app that meets a certain demand. So it will come. We just have to be patient. Cause right now it may seem like an amped up sidekick, but the potential alone is what excites me, not so much as what I can do right here and right now.

But we all are different.

 

[bradley1865]

you make a great point Chosen_1. i can't argue with your comments.
Such are the reasons i tokk this leap of faith.

 

[Mrqwebb2]

Wow! I didn't realize I was hurting anyone with my opinions.
Regarding the streaming media, I mean that we cannot go to say a radio
station's website and stream their feed. Or watch the news we choose.
As far as doing my research is concerned, I got it from T-mobile on several
occasions that viewing documents etc. would not be a problem.
Not a problem out of the box. And seriously, how do you build a browser
that can't view websites with flash in this day and age? Just my opinion.

I hears Microsoft is going to offer silverlight for flash sometime soon.

 

[sleebus.jones]

The ONLY defense we have for this phone is that it is open source. And the Dev community for ths platform is already HUGE. And right now the community is demanding the ability to open documents, view flash that isn't named youtube, and more streaming media abilities.

Yep, you are exactly on target. As fast as I've been seeing stuff come out, I'm not worried at all.

 

[cgprincess]

disappointment would come from the fact that people aren't used to finding "open source" on a cellphone.

open source meaning... there are a ton of people in this world (me one of them) who are engineering minded and capable. Inventors of the new age. IF you suggest something, someone will build it. Open source starts out small and usable, with the absolute bare minimum requirements.. then the community takes over. The SDK is amazing, the possibilities are endless. I mean, theres a freaking program that can measure shutter speed and another to scan your retina to lock down your phone. Come on, give it a little more than a *day*.

Useless apps will be plentiful, but just from what I am seeing come out on the android market every day since I got my G1, I know that someone will come up with the apps you want, plus more. You have more than just one development team working for you, and trust me, they are people like you and me.

 

[Sundog]

it is impossible dor a company to satisfy everyone

A certain fruity competitor seems to be managing it rather well.

how else would so many companies out there all doing big business, its because people want different things and like choice. instead of cramming this phone with a ton of junk most people wont use, they put just the most common apps and left the rest for you to pick and choose yourself and make your own choice.

This rather misses the point, which was that those apps are not there to choose from and won't be for months. Sloppy marketing, any way you look at it.

My only data point for this is my wife who loves her Sidekick and is totally uninterested in the G1, partly because of this very issue. (And the Sidekick "apps" and "games" suck out loud!)

I feel the point needs reiteration: It's not what WE propellerheads are comfortable waiting for that counts. It's the potential millions out there who are saying "Cool, but what does it actually DO?" Right now the answer is, not much, compared to a certain competitor, for instance. Sorry, that's just the truth.

After all, we have an example right in front of us that it IS possible to release a new phone and have a ton of software available for it immediately. To me it's pretty undeniable that the lack of apps available at startup will result in fewer sales than might have been the case.

Let's face it, the Peepul don't even know or care what open source IS. They just want a cool phone that does a lot of things NOW, not next year.

 

[phuthanvinh]

People's frustrating is somehow accurate and inappropriate, firstly, this is the very first beta version of Google Android and it's only been around for 2 days (officially published ), and we can't compare it to the long time existing WM, nor expecting it to have millions of app created immediately, logically, only one car can enter and exit the toll, and continuously one after another. Just wait man, you won't be disappointed at all. About the device, i agree, this sucks. Haha but android is going to explode like an atomic bomb soon.

 

[punkzanyj]

As far as doing my research is concerned, I got it from T-mobile on several
occasions that viewing documents etc. would not be a problem.

Is that all you did, though, talked to a T-Mobile rep?

Everything you are complaining about was well documented all over the internet since at least september. Even the information straight from Google/Android was honest about that. Those things were in blogs, forums, previews at Engadget, Cnet, Gizmodo, and all sorts of other places. All you had to do was put "T-Mobile G1" into Google and you would've found that information. Asking reps is a gamble, as they only know as much as they've been told, and with any company there are always going to be reps that will say anything just to get you off the phone.
My suggestion is to always do a lot of research, especially online, before you make a major purchase. Even if I'm not buying something at amazon, I'll look it up just so I can read the bad reviews to find out what people hated. A lot of times people expect something out of a device it wasn't built to do, but in some cases you find out "oh, it has THIS problem, No way man!" and you save your money.

To clarify a few things.

You can view attachments, I've had no problem seeing .doc attachments, and google docs has read-only access to .doc and excel files.

There is a sound recorder. Look in the user guides, they should show you how to get to it.

I think the G1 is the first of a new kind of device. A Smartphone for regular (read Non-business) people. I see 14-year olds with blackberrys and I'm pretty sure they don't even know what exchange is, let alone need it on their phone. People who don't actually "need" a smartphone are buying them for the added features, the web connection, the full keyboard, etc. I think the G1 didn't have exchange support built in because they weren't designing it for business people. Look at the apps that won the design challenge, look at the ones in the market right now, these aren't spreadsheets, and stock-exchange tickers, these are shopping tools, social interaction tools, games, stuff that's for anybody.

But that's just my two sense.

 

[punkzanyj]

"Quote:
Originally Posted by ram100987
it is impossible dor a company to satisfy everyone

A certain fruity competitor seems to be managing it rather well."

Sundog, I work for an IT company, and the iPhone is quickly becoming the the bane of our existence. Every day, it seems, someone calls in with another "my iphone stopped ______." issue. My boss has one and he can't wait to go back to his Treo. There are so many complaints about iPhone it's not even funny anymore. The joke around the office has been that whenever we're on the phone with a client and they get cut off, when they call back we ask "so were you calling from an iPhone?"

 

[Sundog]

"Quote:
Originally Posted by ram100987
it is impossible dor a company to satisfy everyone

A certain fruity competitor seems to be managing it rather well."

Sundog, I work for an IT company, and the iPhone is quickly becoming the the bane of our existence. Every day, it seems, someone calls in with another "my iphone stopped ______." issue.

Interesting. Not doubting you, but I wonder why the press and user reaction seems so overwhelmingly positive, then. This is the first I've heard of ANY problems, other than the original, short-lived network issues. If there are widespread problems, people are being awfully quiet about it.

Yesterday Giz or Engadget had an article quoting an Intel exec as saying that the Atom was the problem with the IPhone, and their reactions were... huh? What problems?

Before anyone gets me wrong, I am, shall we say, not a fan of Apple in any way, shape or form, but they DO seem to have had an amazingly smooth rollout.

 

[punkzanyj]

Interesting. Not doubting you, but I wonder why the press and user reaction seems so overwhelmingly positive, then. This is the first I've heard of ANY problems, other than the original, short-lived network issues. If there are widespread problems, people are being awfully quiet about it.

Yesterday Giz or Engadget had an article quoting an Intel exec as saying that the Atom was the problem with the IPhone, and their reactions were... huh? What problems?

Before anyone gets me wrong, I am, shall we say, not a fan of Apple in any way, shape or form, but they DO seem to have had an amazingly smooth rollout.

well there's these:

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1139
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/10/23/apple-replacing-some-iphones-due-to-wifi-issues/
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/10/22/intel.rags.on.iphone.chips/

and there's this quote:

"If anything, the iPhone 3G

 

[Sundog]

well there's these:

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1139
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/10/23/apple-replacing-some-iphones-due-to-wifi-issues/
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/10/22/intel.rags.on.iphone.chips/

and there's this quote:

"If anything, the iPhone 3G—despite all the complaints about reception, battery life, and its (relatively) pricey data plan—only heightened the frenzy."
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/29553/its-even-more-official-iphone-is-a-monster-hit/


Let's see, the original iPhone didn't have exchange support at launch, the headphone jack was badly assembled making it hard to use non-apple headphones with it( haven't you noticed a lot of earbuds boasting: "compatible with iPhone!" in the past year?), and it wasn't secure enough for most businesses to use until the 3G. Plus, even the 3G is missing a basic, run-of-the-mill feature that Windows Mobile has had for at least the past 5 years: Copy and Paste. I think people put up with Apple's shortcomings for two reasons 1) At least it's not Microsoft and 2) But the iPhone is so "COOL".
That's the only thing I can come up with that would explain why Apple products don't have fewer problems, but do have fewer complaints.

I guess, to me, these quibbles don't rise to the point of becoming an IT support person's worst nightmare. Surely you aren't getting angry calls about people being unable to cut and paste or connect their headphones.

The inarguable point, it seems to me, is that whether it makes us happy or not, the Iphone is a spectacular success, and we are not helping ourselves by pretending it isn't. To conquer your enemy you must first understand them thoroughly.