Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

So you might remember that I posted earlier about having issues with the speed of the Touch Pro, and the responsiveness as well as the battery life.

I've had the G1 for a couple weeks now and it's awesome. It's one of my favorite phones ever, but there are 3 problems with it that have me considering the HTC Touch Pro again.

#1 - My wife is still on Sprint and likes her phone (the Rant) and so our cell phone bill has effectively doubled, not being able to share minutes, etc. In these economic times that's not trivial.

#2 - I really really really miss voice dialing. On my old Samsung A920 I could just hit the button on the bluetooth headset and basically give the name of anyone in my contact list and the phone would dial them. This doesn't work at all with the G1

#3 - The ergonomics of the phone are bugging me. I think the keyboard is better, but I'm getting thumb pain in my left thumb from having to reach so far to hit dial, etc. It's definitely not a phone you can operate well with one hand.

Now my questions. From what I remember of the Touch Pro the brief time I had it, it's much shorter. Like an inch or two inches shorter. Has anyone had any problems with ergo issues related to holding the phone, operating it, etc.?

Secondly, has the build quality improved at all? Is there a lot of phones out there that is known to have a better battery or be less prone to being defective? I know that if I go with Best Buy (what I'm considering doing since I canceled with Sprint completely) that I could get their PRP and thus not have to deal with Sprint's suboptimal customer service. But I'd still like to know if the phones have improved at all in terms of quality.

Finally, aside from installing a custom ROM has anyone come up with a sure fire set of things to do to speed up Windows Mobile on the phone? I see many posts in this forum about getting android on the Touch Pro or speed issues. So it isn't encouraging to think of going from a phone that's silky smooth to one that chugs along.

If it has gotten better, though, having voice dialing back and reducing my phone bill by $70/month would probably make up for it.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

I actually was considering the G1 briefly myself, before I decided to recommit to the plan on getting the TP and being on Sprint. As to the rest:

Reason #1 - OK, that's substantial. Not definitive maybe, but substantial.

Reason #2 - funny enough I used to have a Sammy A920 and its voice dialing beat the stuffing out of the TPs version. Much more accurate, loud, responsive and pleasant to listen to. I understand your irritation about the G1 lacking this feature but it wouldn't be a high priority for me to consider switching away if you like the rest of the phone that much.

People say the build quality on November-made TPs has improved, but mine is from mid-October and I may have just gotten lucky - I have no major gripes.

On balance I'd say stick with the G1 - you're not likely to like the TP much more the second time if you have to work that hard at getting it to do what you want. But the money difference on your bills might tip the scales.

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

Really? The A920 voice dialing is that much better? Hmmm... You're probably right. Maybe I'll try the BlueAnt headset first to see if that gets me close enough. At least a few speed dials, etc. The one thing about Android is that it's moving fast. Very fast. So it could have competent voice dialing in a few months, whereas WinMo probably won't get much faster until 7.0. Not sure when that's coming out.

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

get rid of that crap g1 sucks

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

For what it's worth, I find that the voice dialing on my tp is almost 100% accurate. I to love this feature, that coupled with live search.

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

Well, maybe this is a problem with my individual TP or some setting I'm not aware of, but I'd say VC on mine is wrong about 1/4 to 1/3 of the time. Plus the voice sounds annoyingly robotic and very faint in volume, hard to understand. My old A920's was right nearly every time, loud clear and very human sounding.

Have you done any tweaks or anything to improve the performance on yours?

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

i wud definey concur...dude at my job got da google joint, and gaws at mines any chance he gets...especially since i recently installed SPB mob shell...so...it is what it is

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

I'm personally surprised at how much i can do with the voice controls
i tried to dial something, but it misheard me and started playing a song, and i'm all "i didn't know it could do that!"

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

I say give the TP a shot. it's improving, and android will be on it soon, there's already a beta version that's kinda working... so you'll have the form factor of the TP, with the option to run android or WM... that's what i'm lookin forward to.

Re: Have a G1, about to give the Touch Pro a second chance, am I crazy?
 

That doesn't really help. The main person to give a blow by blow reply to my situation told me I should probably keep the G1.