For starters, the G1 is a great phone. The keyboard is useful, the on screen keyboard is decent, phone reception with T-Mobile is great as would be expected, and the ability to use Google Voice is just amazing (See previous post). But I digress, this post started when I woke up this morning wanting to see a show I had missed.
I started off by downloading latest episode of Entourage after which I thought it'd be a good idea to watch it on the train. I downloaded the necessary software and before I knew it, I had converted the video file into G1 compatible MP4 (Tutorial here).
On the train, the sound was pretty decent although not loud enough to combat the rails. Anyway, I started getting a few looks since I wasn't using any headphones so I decided to buy an adapter using the G1 browser. This is where the it really fails to impress me. It took me a little less time to buy the adapter off of Amazon than it took me to download, convert and load the episode of Entourage onto the G1. Some may say that browsing the web on your phone is a privilege and not a feature and I agree to an extent but it's the $25 price tag on this privilege that bothers me. $25 is a premium rate. There's a lot you can get for $25 a month so I expect to get decent performance out of it.
But in all fairness, I never expected much from 3G to begin with. I'm well aware that 3G didn't live out a calender year in Japan before being replaced with 4G. So, I'm not that disappointed, but I digress again! My point is that PMP device's have been mastered and I've come to expect a near flawless experience when it comes to viewing my multimedia content on devices. The G1 doesn't fail in this department.
One thing to note is that shopping on the iPhone is significantly simpler and faster. The next thing I'm going to try is make an RDC connection and just make the purchase from my home computer. It's probably not the most secure thing to do but it'll probably be smoother than using the browser. My theory is that there is a time and place for everything. The time is always right and if your not in the right place, use your device to get there.
If any reader has experience using VNC Connect, shot me an email or comment with your experience.
