The T-Mobile G2 Preview

HTC has been having some interesting problems with the G2. For an HTC handset, it seems like there are a lot of minor issues popping up all over the place. I already mentioned the loose hinges issue, but there’s also an issue with the amount of memory the phone ships with. The G2 is supposed to have 4GB of NAND built in, whereas the Desire Z has 2GB of flash memory. More than a few G2’s (including mine) have shipped with 2GB onboard as opposed to the 4GB that it should be. It sounds like a pretty simple assembly line mixup on HTC’s part, but it’s still odd to see so many production issues with an HTC device, regardless of how new it is. I’m supposed to be exchanging mine for a different unit sometime soon, but we’ll see how T-Mobile decides to handle this one.

Edit: A bit of Googling brings me to this thread on the xda-developers forum, which basically says that the G2 ships with a 4GB NAND chip onboard, but the remainder of the memory is not recognized. How T-Mobile/HTC plan to fix this issue still remains to be seen.

Overall though, the G2 has the potential to impress. Great design, a great keyboard, good screen, solid camera/camcorder and good performance. The hinge and battery life are two significant issues that prevent the phone from being great. I suspect T-Mobile's sudden stop of preorders for the G2 has more to do with correcting the build quality issues and less with actually fulfilling demand. There's unfortunately no way around the battery life, but we'll reserve a full conclusion for when we have our entire suite of battery tests complete.

The manufacturing issues aside, G2 seems to live up to the immense hype it had before launch, and T-Mobile seems to have a winner on their hands. Most people who got G1 contracts early on should be set to upgrade right about now, making the G2 doubly attractive to those people. 

For a number of reasons, the G2 strikes a unique place in the market, one that has been sorely missed since the passing of the original G1. As the first top tier GSM Android device with a keyboard (since the G1), the first top tier HTC GSM Android device (since the Nexus One), and the only Android device on any network that’s running a completely stock version of Android, the G2 is going to get a lot of fans really quickly. Let's hope T-Mobile can address the hinge issues quickly enough to avoid disappointing those eager fans.