T-Mobile G2 Review

Features

The T-Mobile G2 is quite a feature-packed smartphone, but one aspect that sets it apart from the rest of the pack is the fact that it's T-Mobile's first HSPA+ smartphone. HSPA+ is an evolution of the carrier's 3G network, and though not technically 4G, T-Mobile is promising 4G-like speeds with theoretical peak speeds of 14.4Mbps. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the network isn't widely available. Currently, T-Mobile has rolled out its HSPA+ network to 65 major metropolitan cities, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, and Seattle, and reaches 100 million people. The carrier said it plans to expand its footprint to 100 major metropolitan cities by the end of the year. You can check for your city on T-Mobile's coverage map.

Luckily, we were able to test out the network here in Manhattan, and we have to say the speeds were quite impressive. We downloaded Ookla's Speedtest.net app from the Android Market to our G2 to clock download and upload speeds, and we averaged 3.89Mbps down, peaking at 5.18Mbps, and 1.28Mbps up. By comparison, Sprint's 4G network provided average download speeds of 3.42Mbps and upload speeds of 0.93Mbps on the HTC Evo 4G.

Design

Let's be honest. The T-Mobile G1 wasn't much of a stunner in the looks department, and though we wouldn't necessarily classify the T-Mobile G2 as sexy, the smartphone's design is a huge improvement over its predecessor. At 4.68 inches tall by 2.37 inches wide by 0.55 inch thick and 6.5 ounces, the G2 isn't the most compact or lightweight device, but without the chin, it's easier to slip into a pants pocket. The overall look of the phone is clean and very professional, but what's striking about the handset is its build quality. The G2 features stainless-steel parts and a soft-touch finish, and when you hold the phone in your hand, it feels like you're getting a premium device and not something plasticky or cheap.

The G2 features a 3.7-inch WVGA Super TFT capacitive touch screen. It's not quite as vivid as the Super AMOLED displays that grace Samsung's Galaxy S phones, but it's still gorgeous and bright. Images and video look great, and text was easy to read. The display also has a proximity sensor, a built-in accelerometer, and pinch-to-zoom support, all of which were responsive during our testing.

The G2 offers both the Android keyboard and Swype, but you also have a four-row QWERTY keyboard at your disposal, and it's quite a good one. The raised buttons are a decent size with enough spacing between them to minimize mispresses. Though we love Swype, we found the keyboard so easy to use that we found ourselves using it for most tasks, even sending short text messages. There's also a dedicated button for the www./.com extensions, as well as three "quick keys" on the bottom row, which you can assign to open specific apps.

All that said, there is one aspect of the G2's design that bothers us a bit, and that's the slider hinge. The sliding mechanism itself is very smooth, and the screen locks securely into place. However, as some early users have discovered, it doesn't always stay in place. It's unclear whether this is happening on every device, but when the G2 is held upside down, the screen drops down. It happened on our review unit after a few hours of use, but granted, you're not going to be holding your phone in that position; we wouldn't say it's a deal breaker, but still, we'd prefer if it stayed shut. We're also a little weary at how the hinge will hold up after an extended period of use, but T-Mobile said that it put the G2 through rigorous testing and passed, so we'll see.

There are a number of other controls on the phone. Below the display, you'll find the standard Android shortcuts--home, menu, back, and search--as well as an optical trackpad. On the left side, there's a volume rocker and Micro-USB port and a camera activation/capture key on the right spine. The top of the device features a 3.5mm headphone jack and a power button, and the camera and flash are located on the back.

The T-Mobile G2 comes packaged with an AC adapter, a USB cable, an 8GB microSD card, a wired stereo headset, and reference material.