Bwana.org » t-mobile

From An iPhone To A T-Mobile G1

Bwana — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:06:52 +0000

T-Mobile was gracious enough to supply me with a G1 review unit. I’ve been playing with it for about a week now and I’ve seen and learned quite a bit. A lot of people are curious about how it compares to the iPhone’s experience. It’s a hard question to answer directly, so I’m going to be producing a series of videos on Bwana.TV (my video blog) about the Android experience and some of the applications that are available. Unfortunately, I’m not able to purchase any applications since the review unit is tied to a separate account, but I’ll do what I can amongst the free applications.

So stay tuned to Bwana.TV for a bunch of T-Mobile G1 videos, and how it compares to the iPhone experience.

How Much Have You Spent On iPhone Applications?

Bwana — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:53:06 +0000

The iPhone is taking the world by storm. (no pun intended RIM) Yesterday, Apple announced their quarterly earnings for Q4 2008 and the results were shocking to say the least. Apple reported they sold 6.9 million phones last quarter which achieves their goal of 10 million in 2008. Also surprising is that Apple is now the 3rd largest supplier of phones. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

Click to Play

It is also known that RIM and Google are planning to implement their own version of the iTunes App Store which has proven to be wildly successful. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Doesn’t this all sound familiar? Remember when the iPod first started to boom? I digress.

I’ve found the iTunes App Store to be a great addition to the iPhone universe, especially since there are a good amount of high quality free applications. The question I have for everyone is, have you been tracking how much you’ve been spending on the iTunes App Store? I know some people are well aware of how much they spend on songs in the iTunes Store and elsewhere, but do you truly know how much you’ve spent? For me, it’s easy: I’ve spent $5.99.

The only application I’ve bought to date is Tuner by Nullriver, Inc.

I’m quite proud of this since I was tempted so many times to buy other applications, but I refrained. I’ve made it this far by focusing on all the great free applications on the iTunes App Store. Some of these include Evernote, Pandora, Facebook, Twinkle, Remote, AirSharing, Pro Football App, and College Football App. In these days where many are cutting back on costs (myself included), free is a great price.

So, what apps do you feel are must haves for the iPhone/iPod-Touch? Have you tracked your spending in this temptation store? Do you care? Let me know in the comments.

T-Mobile G1: Beware Of The Limitations

Bwana — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:50:47 +0000

Today, the Google Android platform had its coming out party, and the first phone to use Google’s new mobile software, is the T-Mobile G1. Rather than bore you with all the details you’ve read about one the web already, I’ll summarize some limitations of the T-Mobile G1:

No 3.5mm headphone jack. (Update 09/25/08 – T-Mobile will eventually ship adapter but not in first shipments)
No modem tethering
Includes only 1 GB Micro SD memory card (expandable to 8GB)
~~Data transfer limited to 1GB/month~~ (Update 09/25/08 Lifted by T-Mobile)
Lack of Microsoft Exchange support out of the box
No desktop/computer sync option. All data in the cloud!
No A2DP/Stereo Bluetooth
Google Account required to use
No video capture
Update Copy & paste is limited to form fields. It is not global.

Granted this is the first release of many Google Android supported phones, some of these limitations can be taken with a grain of salt. The major limitation I can see at this time is that Google Android is all about cloud computing, and I don’t think adoption rate will be swift with that limitation. Not everyone is ready to completely move to the cloud. Since I haven’t had first hand use of the device, I can’t really recommend it or not, but on paper, if I were to make a decision today, I would pass on this model.