| Mini Review of the HTC Dream |
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The HTC Dream (otherwise known as the G1 in the US) is the first smartphone in Canada to be based on the Google Android operating system. I got a chance to play with a Dream for a couple of hours and this mini-review represents my impressions of the phone over that period of time. I’ll try and get one for a more in-depth review at a later date. Last Updated: 12-Jun-2009 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
RF Sensitivity: Because this was only a mini-review
I was unable to perform any serious RF testing. From what I saw however, the
Dream seems to have excellent RF sensitivity in both 3G and 2G modes.
Audio Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Tonal Balance: I’d never had very good experiences
with HTC models prior to the Dream, and so I hadn’t really expected much. I was
therefore very surprised to find that the Dream had excellent tonal balance. In
fact, tonally it was one of the best-sounding phones I’d tried in ages and it
had a slightly richer tonal quality than my N95.
Sound Reproduction: This aspect of the Dream was
also excellent, with clear reproduction and virtually no detectable hiss (though
I never got a chance to try it in a really quiet environment to be absolutely
sure).
Earpiece Volume: Great sound would be naught if it
wasn’t backed up by half-decent audio volume and the Dream comes through with
flying colors yet again. The maximum volume of the Dream was just a hair shy of
the maximum volume on my N95 with the volume boost feature kicked in. Even
low-volume sources come out of the earpiece sounding loud enough to hear well in
day-to-day situations.
Outgoing Audio: Happily the outgoing audio is just
as impressive as the incoming audio. The volume, clarity, and tone of the sound
is simply stunning. It even handles the background noise at the Square One food
court with aplomb.
Speakerphone: Sadly the phone doesn’t really
provide a particularly good speakerphone implementation. The single back-mounted
speaker produces tinny and often distorted sound at rather low volumes. It’s one
of those speakerphones that are okay for times when you get put on hold for
ages, but it doesn’t really have the quality or volume necessary to use in a
real conversation.
The same speaker also provides second-rate audio for multimedia applications, so
you might want to use headphones when you watch videos or listen to music. The
phone does support Bluetooth stereo (A2DP), but it does not have a 3.5 mm
headset jack. To plug in a standard wired headset you have to buy an adapter
that connects to the proprietary jack at the bottom of the Dream.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: I’d hoped to test the ring volume by
sending over a copy of my Loud Ringer.mp3 file via Bluetooth. However, I was
unable to do so because the Dream does not support OBEX file transfer under
Bluetooth. This is a glaring omission I’d get to in a minute. I was left with
testing the ringer based on the ringtones provided in the phone. As with most
modern phones however, the speaker used for the speakerphone is also the sounder
for the ringtones, and so the volume and clarity of the ringers was along the
same lines as the speakerphone performance. That is to say, the ringers are
fine, but nothing great.
Keypad Design: This is a bit of mixed bag. While
the Dream has a physical QWERTY keyboard that is exposed by swinging the screen
up, it does not have a physical keypad for phone operation. For that it relies
on a virtual on-screen keypad like the iPhone.
I’ll start with the physical QWERTY keyboard. The mechanism for getting the
screen out of the way of the keyboard is quite ingenious. Rather than using a
slider, it had a multi-armed lever system that allows the screen to swing up and
come to rest in the same horizontal position as it had before you moved it. The
keyboard has relatively small keys, but they are laid out in the standard QWERTY
fashion and they are easy to use. I was quite pleased with the physical
keyboard.
The virtual keyboard was another matter all together. Unlike the iPhone, on
which I could easily get the screen to respond as intended to my gestures, the
Dream was much more frustrating. For example, to swipe the numeric keypad out of
the way to get at the recent calls list below it I often found myself pressing
the 2 key instead. When I typed in phone numbers the 0 key mysteriously failed
at least 1 out of 3 times I used it. The general feeling I got from the Dream’s
touch screen was that I wanted to use a stylus to avoid the inaccuracies. And of
course, there is no tactile feel whatsoever and no feedback that you’ve pressed
a key, other than by observing the response of the application you’re running.
Display: The display was gorgeous. It sported the
same resolution as the iPhone (480 x 320), but in a slightly smaller size (3.2
inches vs 3.5 inches in the iPhone). The Android operating system made excellent
use of the screen real estate, with a handsome-looking UI that was rather
reminiscent of the iPhone. I tested the Dream at night, and so I was unable to
find out how well it worked in direct sunlight.
Icing on the
Cake
Camera: The camera provided with the Dream is a 3.1 megapixel unit that
isn’t great, but it’s not too bad either. I managed to take a few photographs to
compare with those taken with my N95. The results were okay, but the Dream
doesn’t really provide a particularly great photos. It has no flash and no night
mode (that I could find), meaning that it has very limited functionality in
low-light conditions.
It also suffers from the same design flaw as the N95 8GB, which is to say that
the lens protector is flush with the back of the phone and prone to getting
fingerprints all over it. To get the best results from the camera you must
ensure the lens is spotless, which means protecting it in some way, or cleaning
it with a microfibre cloth before each use.
Bluetooth: I was rather shocked to discover that
the Bluetooth implementation is for audio only. Like the iPhone, this serious
limitation is inexcusable in a smartphone. I can see dumb phones having
Bluetooth just for audio, but the lack of OBEX file transfer on a smartphone is
just mind-numbing. It was bad enough that Apple didn’t put it in the iPhone, but
that doesn’t mean HTC has to wear the dumb-design dunce cap too.
Conclusions
Based on my very limited exposure
to the Dream I was both very impressed and rather disappointed all at the same
time. As a phone the Dream is a dream. It has incredibly good audio qualities
both incoming and outgoing, and great RF sensitivity to go along with it.
However, the clumsy virtual keypad for phone operation makes it a frustrating
device to use as a phone (unless you only receive incoming calls, in which case
answering such calls is really not an issue).
I didn’t have enough time to really delve into the operating system, which is
something I hope to do in the future. On the surface the Android O/S seems as
competent as the iPhone, though in Apple’s defense the Dream does lack the
really useful multi-tap user interface (which allows the iPhone to offer such
stellar input features such as pinching your fingers together to decrease zoom
for example). Hopefully I can provide a more in-depth review of the O/S at a
future time.
