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.
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. ;-)