Review Of T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Cell Phone
T-Mobile MyTouch 3G – stunning looks, great performer.
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Great screen, touch screen is very responsive and has haptic feed back, excellent call quality.
Thumbs Down:
No 3.5 mm phone jack, music quality could have been better.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Google Maps, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates For Global Evolution), HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), Internet Browser.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has a 3.2 inch TFT LCD display. It gives a resolution of 320X480 pixels. Supported audio formats on the phone are AAC, MP3, WAV, MIDI, AMR, OGG, WMA and AAC+. Video formats recognized are MPEG4 and 3GPP. The phone has a wireless interface of IEEE 802.11b , IEEE 802.11g , Bluetooth 2.0 EDR. Application software includes Google maps and Google Talk and other popular IMs. The phone has no 3.5 mm phone jack
The camera of the phone is 3.2 megapixel with no flash or portrait mirror. The battery of the phone (Li – Ion, 1340 mAh) has talk time of seven hours and 16 days of stand by time. The phone has 192 MB RAM / 512 MB ROM and is powered by Qualcomm MSM7201A, 528 MHz processor. You can put additional memory into the phone using the microSD slot. The phone also supports IMAP/POP3/SMTP for emails. For data has GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA 1.8 Mbit/s/HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s/HSDPA 7.2 Mbit/s/HSUPA/HSUPA 2.0 Mbit/s
Razzle Dazzle:
T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is a downright sexy looking phone. It has an all white design on the front and the big screen is really intimidating, which promises really good videos and games to play on. This is not all; the mobile is sleek and thin and will easily fit into your pocket. The phone doesn’t have a physical keyboard, it features virtual touch screen keyboard and we are sure that the physical keyboard is something that you won’t miss because the big screen promises spacey virtual keyboard buttons. Besides, a physical slide out keyboard would have had ruined the thin look of the phone.
Inside Dope:
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is very pretty looking and the big screen really rocks! T-Mobile’s first Android phone was G1 and we now have the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G after about ten months of wait. The phone has been worked hard upon and it really shows on the features side.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is nothing like its predecessor, the G1 was like a square box and bit clunky, where as this phone is a bit more thin and you get color options of black white and merlot. We got the white version for test in our centers. The phone has a ‘chin’ in the bottom just like some Android phones have been known to have and this might give you an itch in the pocket. But it is sure to fit in the tightest of jeans.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is 4.65 inches tall, 0.65 inch deep, 2.19 inch wide and weighs 4.09 ounces.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has a big 3.2 inch touch screen and it is the best part of the phone. You seldom get to see this big screen in phones (except the iPhone which has a 3.5 inch screen) and the resolution is 480X320 which not the best but it is not that bad either. We think the screen would have been as big as Apple’s counterpart if the buttons and the bottom of the screen would have been sacrificed. The screen is HVGA material which is sure to give you better quality videos and photos as compared to the standard LCD screen. You can change wallpapers, backlighting time and brightness.
The menu of the screen is a three screen feature where you get the middle screen as default. You can flick your screen back and front on the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G to access the applications. There are a couple of default icons being put in but you can always remove them and put your own. But with a three screen space we doubt if you will have to delete them. While checking out the phone display we were drooling for quite a while on the turtle wallpaper in the back and were admiring the quality for a long time. The icons are placed in a different ‘U’ style but looks neat. On the top of the screen you get the Google search bar.
Google Search bar on the top of the screen is for searching on the internet. Tapping on it once will give you a virtual keyboard but it is not available in horizontal mode. Next to the bar is the microphone button which refers to the voice search function. We don’t use the search function too often and the bar could have been done away with to give you more real estate on the screen.
We were to find the menu interface was user friendly. The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G doesn’t have any eye candy graphics on the menu interface but this was probably done so that the phone won’t slow down during multi tasking. If you find it monotonous to go in to the menu and access the icon, then you can long press the button and add it to the home screen. On the home screen, if you drag an icon to the menu, it lets you delete the short cut of the application, but the application itself won’t be deleted.
On the bottom of the screen is the touch screen button which pops up the menu just like the ‘start menu’ in the computer. You can again scroll through the lists in the menu and you are not limited to specific number of icons there. You flick the finger if you want to move quickly and you move you finger by dragging it around the screen for slow access. This reminded us of our first experience with iPhone.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has a multi touch interface with which you can ‘pinch’ the photos. It means you can use two or more fingers to touch the different parts of the screen and all the touches will be registered. The ‘pinch’ feature can be used to zoom in and out of the photos. The phone is not resistive but capacitive which means you say bye-bye to stylus and all you need is fingers to get the phone working.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has haptic feed back but again this is not available for all functions. Haptic feedback means that the phone gives you click or vibration feels when it registers a touch. In this phone, there is vibration feature. When you touch an icon to access it, nothing happens but when you long press the icon it will give a small vibration. We would have loved a function which would let us increase the feel of the vibration and also haptic feedback for all functions. You long press the icon on the menu to move it around on the screen and also to access some functions like the ‘right click’ function on the computer. Touching the icon and moving it around on the screen felt like making things move which are floating on the water. It was very smooth.
There are a few physical buttons on the bottom of the screen and we think that the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G could have done away with these buttons too to give you a screen which is as big as iPhone. The buttons squeezed between the screen and the curve, are the track ball button which is a bit bigger than G1 and more comfortable to use. On the left of the trackball there is a menu key, a press will bring up six shortcuts to applications. A home button takes you to the home screen, it is like the ‘show desktop’ button on the computer. We would have also liked a collapse button which closes all running application on the phone. Other than that there is a call and call end button, back and search button. Pressing the call button wakes up the dialer and you push the buttons on the screen that makes up the phone number. There is no haptic feedback here. In all six buttons along with the track ball it is up to you to decide whether it is crowded down there or not.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has built in accelerometer but we were disappointed that it is not available in all applications. It is not available even for the Google search bar either. All you get is a virtual keyboard in portrait mode and it is a pretty small horizontal screen your fingers will start howling if you type for too long. You tilt the phone towards left to access the horizontal screen, a right tilt will do nothing and the transition takes about two seconds.
But we had no complaints when the keyboard was in landscape mode. The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G makes full advantage of the big screen to give you a spacious and big keyboard. Mishits will be rare on these keys. There is the predictive text with which you can type faster. You can change typing from numeric/symbol to alphabetic when you do a single tap. The landscape keyboard is available for browser, messaging and e-mail.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has a few ports on the sides. There is a single port for charger, USB port and the headset which means you can only use a single peripheral at a time. A propeitary headphone port also means that you cannot plug in your own set of head phones. There is Bluetooth with which you can pair up head sets but we would have liked best of both worlds. The volume rocker on the side of the phone is a bit tiny and you might struggle to use it when you are in a call.
A single entry in the phone book can take up to eight phone numbers, instant messaging ID, company or organization name, street address, four e-mail IDS and notes. You make up a group and put people in it and you can also give a unique ring tone to a contact. Along with this you can also pair up a contact with a photo so that his face flashes when he is calling you. The phone has fifty five polyphonic ring tones and you can use the MP3 music files on the phone as ring tones too. The SIM card stores additional 250 contacts. You can also sync the contacts of Gmail to your phone.
Other use full applications on the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G include calendar which you can sync with Gmail calendar, calculator, alarm clock. Advanced applications include Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth, USB mass storage, software for PC syncing and voice dialing which is speaker independent. We would have liked a file manager for moving files between a data card and phone.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has GPS which also has Google Maps and it is quite the same as G1. You can change views to satellite, traffic and standard. There is a compass feature which will change view when you move the phone. It will be available when you tap any point in the Street view. The GPS also gives you turn-by-turn directions.
The phone has support for POP3 connectivity so you can sync mail accounts on the phone. Gmail is the phone’s preffered e-mail client, of course and you will be prompted to create an account or sync your existing one when you switch on the phone. We tried to sync and it was pretty fast. For IM users there is Yahoo, Windows Live, Aim and Gtalk. The phone gives better support to Gtalk than other IMs. When you sign in on Gtalk you can see the status messages of people who use Gtalk when you open you contacts. You can also minimize the IM window and continue other work on the phone. It won’t slow down the device much.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has Microsoft Exchange server support and it is a big feature because this was excluded in G1. You cannot make a smart phone and then leave out such work related applications. You enter your email address then you will have to enter the username and the password and also the server. You will get going in a jiffy. This phone still refuses to support calendar syncing and Outlook contacts. But the e-mail delivery is quite fast.
The music player of the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is good but there is nothing out of the box. It has features like airplane mode, repeat, shuffle and playlists. There is a ‘use as a ringtone’ button which lets you convert a song to a ringtone. But feature wise the music player is a bit let down. We were expecting a iPhone like experience and the properitary port for the head phone jack made matters worse.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G can read MP3, AAC, WMA, RM, AAC+ and OGG formats. You can transfer the songs to the phone using USB interface or you can buy from the 3G or Wi-Fi.
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G has a 3.2 megapixel camera but there is no flash or self portrait mirror. Lack of flash means that photos will not be clear in low light conditions. But other wise the photo quality was good from the standards of a 3.2 mega pixel camera. Colors are bright on the camera and they don’t look washed out. You crop photos which means you can cut the unwanted portions of the picture.
The browser on the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is a good and we had a great time moving through the web pages. The presence of accelerometer sweetens the deal and so does the multi touch feature through which you can zoom in and out of pages.
We tested the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G for call quality it was one of the best that we have ever come against. There were no distortions but a little louder volume could have done. You will struggle to hear what people are saying in crowded, noisy environments. Our friends also reported good call quality and they too could hear us well.
Speaker T-Mobile MyTouch 3G quality is a little low because it attracts a lot of external background noise. But this too was much better than other speakerphones that we have tested. Bluetooth presence lets you pair up a wireless headset. We tried this too and we have nothing to complain about.
Nitty Gritty:
The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is a step above the previous G1 which is improved on features and quality. The big touch screen is very attractive and even though the phone has some drawbacks, they can be overlooked we will recommend you to buy this if you are looking for a smart phone.
