T-Mobile To Begin HTC G2 Preorders

cgriffin21 writes "T-Mobile Thursday finally confirmed what it's been hinting at for a while: The HTC G2, T-Mobile's HSPA+ successor to the HTC G1, is on the way. It'll be an Android 2.2 phone and run on T-Mobile's HSPA+ data network, which while not a 4G network offers what T-Mobile is calling 4G-like speeds up to 21 Mbps. T-Mobile hasn't confirmed pricing or exact availability but said it would open the G2 to presales for existing customers at the end of September."

Re:medicore

[leighklotz]

There's a distinct lack of usable keyboards. The G2 doesn't have the 5-rows of the G1, which is a disappointment.
What good is it having ssh on your mobile device if you can't use it?

Re:IDK

[Anonymous Coward]

It should concern you. A smaller process almost always equates to lower power usage, and in the case of a mobile device, longer battery life. Also, more megahertz doesn't always mean more speed. Early leaked benchmarks show the g2 blowing the nexus one out of the water, even though its clocked at 1ghz.

Only 14.4 Mbps...

[Chris Snook]

While T-Mobile's towers may be capable of 21 Mbps HSPA+, the G2 itself can only do 14.4 Mbps, according to the fine print on T-Mobile's teaser site. Of course, you'll get nowhere near this in real life, but if you have a 7.2 Mbps HSPA device, and you're expecting it to be 3x as fast as whatever you get in real life on that, you'll be disappointed to only get 2x that, at best.

http://g2.t-mobile.com/ [t-mobile.com]

Re:medicore

[JorDan Clock]

That 800MHz processor will be running a vanilla Android ROM, without any vendor-specific GUIs to completely ruin the performance. I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that it runs a lot smoother than any 1GHz smartphone with Touchwiz or MotoBlur.

Re:medicore

[Anonymous Coward]

The CPU and IO speed will be faster if they don't have to worry about any graphics and leave that to the GPU. How much faster depends on many things, but regardless it's more cycles the CPU can spend on real work even if you're not doing intensive 3D and video.

Re:G spot

[zach_the_lizard]

I guess someone has never read that article from the Onion:

Fuck everything: we're doing five blades [theonion.com]

Re:HSPA+ Is NOT 4G

[acid06]

I've seen 3G networks with latencies of 90-100ms to the outside world. While it's not as good as regular broadband, I was even able to decently play some online shooters with that latency with acceptable performance. That's probably the case where latency is most important.

But then, I used to play Quake on a dialup connection back in 1997, so maybe I can just cope with higher latencies better than the average gamer.

Re:medicore

[acedotcom]

actually its a multi-processor phone. and the main processor is clocked down from 1.2GHZ. it has a GPU and application coprocessor that should take some of the heat off the CPU. i am excited about this phone, i just wish it had a row of number keys on the keyboard.

Re:Marketability?

[flimflammer]

High megapixel cameras on cell phones are pure marketing. I wouldn't dock the G2 for "only" having a 5MP camera. It's all the same crap in the end.

Re:IDK

[Anonymous Coward]

Pentium 4s had a much faster clock than processors that are generally sold now. Why have we gone backwards in CPU speed on the desktop?

Re:IDK

[Anonymous Coward]

The displays aren't the only culprits...the radios also use a ton of juice. The first Android phone I used would go three times as long between charges with 3G turned off. My iPhone lasts significantly longer with WiFi turned off. These effects are magnified further when you're in a contentious environment or an area with particularly low signal since the phone will respond by increasing power to make/keep the connection.

Re:HSPA+ Is NOT 4G

[fangorious]

Sprint's WiMAX isn't 4G either. Sprint is using 802.16e whereas the 4G proposal (because it hasn't actually be accepted and made an official ITU-R standard yet) is 802.16m. The 802.16e spec is capable of about 1/10th of what the IMT-Advanced (the real name of 4G) requirements specify. Now I know you didn't actually say anything that is contradicted by what I'm saying, but some people will read your post and think Sprint's Evo 4G == way better data than T-Mobile G2, which is not true. T-Mobile's HSPA+ network is proving [cellphonesignal.com] to be faster than Sprint's WiMax network. They're both pre-4G, T-Mobile's is just better.