By Joe Procopio

This is what all those iPhone junkies must have felt like after those day-long waits in the Apple store. I rushed home to find a tiny little Fed-Ex package containing a tiny little box containing a precious, ever so slight T-Mobile G1. This was it. Nirvana, the Holy Grail. Googlephone.

I’m not going to lie to you. I hugged it. Then I voted for it. Then I added it to my friends list on Facebook.

Stop. I’m yanking your chain.

It seems that every couple months since the iPhone debuted, there comes a wave in which several new handsets proclaim that they’re the iPhone killer. Take it from someone who has hunted that killer like Hanks on DiCaprio, the iPhone doesn’t warrant killing. In fact, it’s been proven that when anyone utters the words “iPhone killer” in public, Apple ships a few more units.

All this iPhone envy is the misguided stepchild of the open-source software industry. The reason why open-source software is a Windows killer is because said software is almost as good as Microsoft’s, and it’s free. Are any of these wanna-be handsets going to be free? Unlikely. Subsidized? Maybe. But not free. Thus, the iPhone shall remain unkilt.

But with Android, there is open-source. This is good, in the sense that developers will flood the market with all sorts of apps, some 1 to 2 percent of which will be useful and wonderful. This is bad, in the sense that another 1 to 2 percent of those apps will probably eat your phone, steal your identity, and send lewd text messages to your boss.

All in all, the T-Mobile G1 is not an iPhone killer, but it is a cultural shift. Here’s why:

There are four types of mobile users in this world: iPhoners, Smartphoners, Texters, and Blackberristas.

The iPhoners get form, function, and an unbeatable media experience, and they give up corporate alignment, much like owning a MacBook over an XP Laptop.

Conversely, the Smartphoners enjoy the ability to crunch numbers, review documents, and run all sorts of business apps, but do so with a painful Windows Mobile interface, a lot of time figuring things out, and an ugly, awkward device.

Texters are the teens and tweens who want a lot of communication functionality – a little web, a lot of text, sharing out the wazoo, and a camera for those special moments.

And the Blackberristas, well, to be honest, I don’t know why anyone is looking at a handset for that many minutes in a row. I don’t get that much email in a day, let alone during half a boring meeting. My theory is that Blackberry users have become electronic zombies, forced to feed their Blackberries their brainwaves, in hopes of pleasing the device so it will continue to provide the equivalent of mobile dopamine.

There’s a screenplay in there somewhere. It’s got Valentine’s Day box office weekend written all over it.

GooglePhone crosses all four of these types. It’s slick like an iPhone, useful like a Smartphone, incredibly user-friendly, and addictive as crack. It’s got drawbacks, sure, but remember, we’re not trying to kill anyone.

So rather than try to convince you that this phone is better than another, let me tell you how Googlephone users will become the fifth type. We’ll call them Androids. I get royalties.

The G1 is pretty, but not groundbreaking. The HTC handset got raves to everyone I handed it to (before I told them it was Googlephone). It’s a little thicker than an iPhone, a little longer than a Blackberry, but slimmer on the X-axis than both, which is key. It fits in your pocket, and you can cradle it with your hand. The slide-out keyboard is hinged, so it actually makes a small semi-circle out instead of just sliding over. This means more room on the 5-line QWERTY keyboard, including a dedicated number-line across the top, and dedicated functions across the bottom. The trackball is cool, exactly like a Blackberry, but I found it a little slow. The screen is the best I’ve seen on a handset in some time. Crystal clear, with deep blacks and very bright, even in direct sunlight. The capacitive touchscreen response is more than adequate, comparable to the iPhone, including most if not all of the little finger tricks you see in the commercials.

I have another theory about Steve Jobs and a childhood fascination with magicians, but my editors have convinced me that I don’t have the credibility to get away with the joke.

Once I powered the G1 up, it took me 15 seconds to link up all my Google info. And WHAM, within 2 minutes of syncing, there’s everything right there, GMail, contacts, calendar, everything. This is where Googlephone will stake its claim as its own type. All the data is stored in the cloud, moving your computing experience from machine to machine without a hiccup, same goes for the G1.

Calls were also crystal. In fact, I was surprised, considering the amount of negativity I had heard about the supposedly lousy calls and slow and droppy 3G network.

But Android is the reason for the hype, so let’s get to it. It’s clean and the navigation is simple. There’s a multi-function menu key to get you around. Right up front, one touch gives you 20 functions from alarm clock to YouTube, plus every app download. Not only that, the programs are designed with single-hand use in mind. I can page through my calendar and contacts with my thumb, same with pictures, email, and mp3.

This is what I hate most about my Smartphone. I’m constantly switching my grip and reaching all around the handset to get similar functions done. Android is intuitive, in the sense that the most common features, like zooming in Google Maps, are right there in front of you and easily accessible. Very little time spent with menus or double tap, and no nerdy stylus. However, at times Android is a little too smart. Not rise-up-and-refuse-its-prime-directive smart, but sometimes you’ll assume an intuition that isn’t there, like a press-and-hold that rewinds in the mp3 player but does nothing in the video player.

If you’re a Smartphoner, you’re giving up a little corporate functionality, these are Google contacts and calendar, not Outlook, and this is Android, not WinMo. No guest invites from the handset for meetings, no Excel on the handset to read spreadsheet attachments.

But here’s my point. I can live with limited corporate functionality if a new mentality eliminates the need for that functionality. Much like the fact that emails sent from a phone are forgiven for brevity and errors, forgiveness is currently extending, like it or not, to the mobile part of our worklives as an accepted part of our overall worklives. Example: I’ll look at your spreadsheet when I get back to my office, I’m currently in Starbucks closing a sale and waiting for my prospect to sugar his Triple Mocha Whatever. This is a cultural shift.

At some point, another cultural shift from machine infrastructure to cloud infrastructure will blend with this accepted mobility, and in my opinion, the fact that the G1 does the cloud so seamlessly is a huge step in the right direction. I won’t tell you I’ve bought into the cloud. I’m still running physical machines for my applications, my web, my email, etc., but I know it’s coming and I’m getting used to the fact that I won’t be able to physically kick my email server when it doesn’t deliver my email. I’m assuming there will be some kind of virtual kickability in the near future, and when that happens, I’ll release the maniacal hold I have on my data and let it go.

And when I think about it that way, it makes sense that the mobile experience is a better proving ground for the cloud. Sure, I don’t want my contact list suddenly public, that will totally affect my ability to drop names. But I’m much less of a control freak with that kind of data than, say, my secret formula for Diet Margaritas, which will make me billions of dollars. At that point, I’ll be able to buy any handset I want — but I will tell you this, it will look a lot like Googlephone.

So I am now an Android in a Smartphone world. How long will it be before I can drop the ruse and just be what I now know I was born to be? That depends on how long these cultural shifts take to catch on, and this is up to the application developers. The G1 has proven that the hardware is there. Android has unleashed the environment. Now it’s up to us geeks to fill in the gaps.

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Joe Procopio is the founder of Intrepid Media, a technical and management consulting and services firm (intrepidmedia.net) and a publishing company/creative network (intrepidmedia.com). He is currently writing Gleaning the Cube, a collection of humorous techie columns that includes exclusive new material. He recently published, and his writing appears in We Are All Adequate: The Intrepid Media 2007 Collection (im2007.intrepidmedia.com). Yes. It’s that late. He can be reached at joe@intrepidmedia.net.

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