Android Phone Review

Added feature to Google Maps: in Street View  you can hold the phone perpendicular to the ground—and as you turn your body, the photo rotates, too, like a photographic compass, so that it matches what you’re seeing with your eyes. It’s amazing and actually useful, especially when you emerge from the subway and have no idea which way you’re facing.

Android, and the G1, are open. Open, open, open, in ways that would make Steve Jobs cringe. You can unlock this phone after 90 days—that is, use any SIM card from any carrier in it.

The operating system is free and open-source, meaning that any company can make changes without consulting or paying Google.

T-Mobile and Google say they won’t censor programs that they don’t approve of, as Apple does with the iPhone store. Yes, even if someone writes a Skype-like program that lets people avoid using up T-Mobile cellular voice minutes.