myTouch 3G Initial Impressions

I had been using a Motorola cell phone for 3+ years that had become all scratched and beaten up, and which lacked any useful amount of battery power. That is when I decided to get a new cell phone. And I didn't just want a new cell phone or "feature" phone, this would have to be a smart phone with 3G and Wifi internet.

Six RustyBrickers have iPhones, and they all seem to be very happy with their devices (and for good reason), except maybe for AT&T's signal quality from within the office. Still, I wanted to try a different phone, one with a platform open to everyone and all kinds of customizations.

I had been following the advancements of Android OS since HTC's G1, also know as the HTC Dream, was brought to market in the summer of 2008 by T-Mobile. Though that first model introduced some cool features, it seemed too bulky and too much of a prototype model to adopt early, so I waited.

When the HTC Magic was announced on February 17, 2009, I felt like this would be a good entry point into the smartphone world. The device would become available to US customers on August 5th, and only with the T-Mobile carrier (they would rename it to the silly name "myTouch 3G with Google").

So I signed up for $199 with the required 2-year T-Mobile contract, and have been enjoying it for 2 weeks. The myTouch does everything I want it to do so far, but I have yet to find out everything that I want to do on it.

Although the operating system (Google Android) is described as being open, I discovered that it is still possible for the service provider to restrict the user in certain ways. I'll have more information about this later.

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