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Hands on: T-Mobile's Pulse Android phone
T-Mobile's newly unveiled Pulse handset is the carrier's third Android device, but the first on a pay-as-you-go tariff and designed to appeal to a broader market.
I had a very brief hands-on with the Pulse at T-Mobile's London launch event, and was impressed with the smoothness of the gesture-based user interface.
However, another journalist at the same event criticised the Pulse's resistive touch screen for not being quite as responsive as the capacitive design used on Apple's iPhone.
The 3.5in screen is certainly a decent size, and T-Mobile even suggested that this would allow the Pulse to replace an in-car satellite navigation device when used with the built-in TeleNav software.
T-Mobile's Canvas home screen provides a desktop area larger than can fit onto the physical display, and you can move around with the flick of a finger to pan or scroll the display.
Canvas also lets you customise this home screen by dragging in the icons you most often access from the application menu to create a shortcut, similar to the way you would on a Windows PC.
The handset itself is about the same size and weight as the iPhone, but unlike Apple's device has the standard green and red call / hangup buttons as well as a miniature trackball bracketed by menu / back keys for those who don't like using the touch screen for everything.
An on-screen keyboard pops up whenever you need to key in text, such as when composing an email, and T-Mobile offers a choice of full Qwerty or a layout similar to RIM's SureType. Its predictive text input algorithm also offers a choice of words you can tap to select.
The device we saw was a pre-production unit, and so there were one or two quirks. The screen did not automatically change orientation when we twisted it round as it is supposed to, for example.
However, in the brief time available we found the device seemed to deliver a reasonable experience when accessing the web. We especially liked how easy it was to browse Android Market for available applications, one feature that has driven uptake of Apple's rival iPhone.
The Pulse certainly ticks all the right boxes at first glance; HSPA support, Wi-Fi, GPS (with a trial version of the TeleNav navigation software), touch-screen and a decent-looking user interface.
A full review of the T-Mobile Pulse will appear on V3.co.uk, just as soon as we can get hold of one for long enough.
wife upgraded to the pulse been back to t-mobile twice now with the same problems, shuts itself down, people ring you they sound like a darlic, and predictive text stops working, would never again buy one waste of money,
Posted by :paul smith | January 17, 2010 7:19 PM
I am using t mobile phone. It's good to see a lot of different Android devices, from a lot of different vendors, finally hitting the market.
I don't know about the build quality, but for what might be considered a low-to-mid-level Android smartphone, it looks quite good.
Posted by :webcams | September 21, 2009 8:40 AM
Hey there,
I just read your review on the t mobile pulse. I was impressed by what I read, however I was not impressed by it only havin a on screen keyboard. I have growin acustomed to the slide out keyboard on my g1. My question yo you is, what is your opinion on the pulse compared to the g1
Posted by :josh rayner | September 6, 2009 10:29 AM