I'm still loving my first generation HTC G1. it's a little bulky and can be slow at times (unless I kill the processes left from applications running the background, then it's snappy), but I really enjoy it.
I've heard really good things about the HTC Hero though, and would love to try one out.
I was a bit underwhelmed by my 'donut' update. More fit and finish than new features.
I really can't wait for Verizon's offerings because I need better network coverage than T-Mobile. My phone doesn't work at my parents house or my in-laws house. :-(
Ah that's a shame, I have pretty good coverage in Texas, but the speeds are a serious drawback. Do you know if Verizon has a "tether" restriction?
If you tether with your G1 and go over a 10gb transfer quota, they will reduce you to edge speed for the rest of the billing cycle.
I mainly stick with T-Mobile because my entire family uses it, so we all get to call each other for free, but I'm not against moving to a new carrier if I can get better speeds and be allowed to tether.
EDIT: I thought the donut release was pretty good overall, I saw huge performance gains and also the UI has been cleaned up a lot. Though not much else seems terribly different.
I'm in TX also, Austin to be specific. My network speed is pretty good but I'm only comparing it to an EDGE connection on my work BB.
The donut release isn't bad. Good performance boost (I wouldn't classify mine as 'huge' but we might use our phones a lot differently). Battery life about the same for me. (I still have a battery charging level issue leftover the from the cupcake upgrade.) I don't know if there were any browser updates in donut but Google Wave on my G1 is very slow to load. (1-2 minutes even on wifi.)
I was mostly comparing the cupcake upgrade to the donut upgrade. There was a huge visible difference between them.
All in all, I love my G1. Way better than my work issued BB. I'm just wanting more. ;-)
The browser was definitely updated, I notice most browsing is at least a little snappier, though I'm disappointed with the browsing experience overall on the G1.
Battery life is pretty bad, but I pretty much keep it on a charger all day long now anyway, got used to knowing it's going to need a charge regularly, if I'm out and about for a while I'll use locale and power center to trim it down to only the basic needs.
I mostly just use the standard calendar, mail, messaging, remember the milk and a little irc and twitter. but I'm pretty regularly going in and purging applications with TasKill.
I'm in Fort Worth, you're pretty much a stones throw away from me.
I work with both the G1 and iPhone at my job and carry both around with me, and the browser on Android just kills the whole deal.
I don't know if it's the lower DPI screen on the G1, the lack of multitouch, or just the rendering speed. I know they're both Webkit under the hood, but man Apple spent a lot more time optimizing Safari and it shows.
The new Android SDK supports variable DPI, so maybe that's a hint that newer phones with iPhone-like screens are on the way.
I can't argue there, I can only hope as the platform matures this changes. They did such a good job with Chrome that I'm left wanting and curious with their mobile browser, at least compared to the iP(hone|odtouch).
Luckily there is also multi touch support on the android SDK I believe as well, so at least we know they have plans to implement it.
Again, comparing to a BB the G1 browsing is heavenly for me.
99% of the time I can make an entire day and I charge overnight. I don't run persistent service other that twidroid. I leave wifi on full time but with the new application/battery usage thing I might start shutting it off.
I talk on the phone rarely, it's mostly twitter, email, surfing and puzzle games.
My kids like 'Abduction: World Attack' (or as they call it 'bouncy cow')
I play FloodFill, Labyrinth Lite, TiltMazes, Orbs Knockoff Lite, TopSETGame, Zilch Free.
I used to play Word Wrench a lot and it was a big competition between my wife and I for high scores. Then one evening, I sat for an hour with a python script cheating the high score up to about 10 times our previous best.
Got tired of it soon after.
EDIT. I told her right away. I just wanted to see the look on her face when she saw the new high score.
ahahaha, I'm sure she was happy you ruined her fun as well. Good stuff, I'll check out those games, my 5 year old isn't terribly interested in tic tac toe anymore.
An better policy would be for providers to do the above, but by day. (So have a trigger of 1/3rd gigabyte a day.) This way, the penalty isn't too onerous (just the rest of the day) and the feedback/learning loop to their customers will be quicker. Make the cutoff at 3am, and they will effectively train heavy downloaders to use bandwidth late at night.
I've heard really good things about the HTC Hero though, and would love to try one out.