T-Mobile G2x First Impressions

Well well well, what do we have here? I never imagined a cellphone having multiple cores but here we are with the G2x rocking a Tegra 2 dual core chip. In a cellphone. What is going on!

Just as something to hold me over until the HTC Sensation comes out, the G2x is a pretty nice step up from my G2. The 4″ screen should make transitioning to the Sensations 4.3″ easier (from the 3.7″ on the G2) and hopefully help me get rid of my best friend that is the BlackBerry Bold 9780.

Playing with the device inside its lock-down mechanism at the T-Mobile store does this phone no justice. It feels good in hand with the soft back even though its a bit wider and longer then what I’m used to. Under the screen, the area for the capacitive buttons looked HUGE in the pictures of the device but in person its not too bad. If it was any smaller I couldn’t imagine all the accidental taps that would occur.

Instead of going into the good things (save those for the review), I’ll just comment on the annoyances for now.

  • No Gingerbread yet. T-Mobile says its coming soon but soon can be a long time. Coming from Cyanogenmod on my G2, it’s definitely missed.
  • No trackpad. While I’d rather not have a trackpad, Froyo was definitely made with one in mind. Going back and editing text inline is pretty annoying, taking multiple taps to land right in between the letters you want.
  • No LED notification. I prefer glancing at my phone sitting on my bed or desk and having some type of indication that a message/email/voicemail/missed call has arrived. A pretty cool workaround is this app (swedish forum) which uses the capacitive buttons as a notification LED.
  • Speed of the phone. Yes, it’s dual core and loading applications is fast. Also scrolling through the app drawer is fast. Scrolling through settings is not however. Many pauses and skips and freezes digging through menus. Especially in the manage applications screen. Also viewing the list has very weird results. Maybe a wipe will fix it but I really don’t want to set everything back up AGAIN just for it to work properly, being a brand new phone.
  • Battery life. Still blows but I’ve learned to expect this from any android phone. Hopefully custom roms will help out here.
  • Home button is swapped with menu button. Since I’ll most likely be switching back and forth with my G2 this may become annoying but it makes sense having the home button a little closer to the right since the phone is a little wider then most and menu is used less then home.
  • Unlocking the phone shows the home screen then quickly switches to the lock screen sometimes.

There are a few other little problems but hopefully Gingerbread fixes them, either from T-Mobile or another custom rom. Needless to say, I’m kinda happy with the phone but I’m for sure on the fence about returning it and just waiting for the Sensations arrival in the next 2 months.

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About bp

Lover of everything technology and data related. People say I have too much patience and they're probably right. Ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for 1000 free supercharger miles. https://ts.la/brian43724

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