Technology Blog

Hey, CLIQ, better check that rear-view mirror, because you've got an interesting competitor coming right up on your tail. T-Mobile is launching another midrange Android QWERTY slider -- some might argue the G1's true successor -- christened the myTouch 3G Slide (not quite the "myTouch Slide" we've been hearing for a few months) with a 3.4-inch HVGA display, 5 megapixel camera, and a pretty heavily-customized skin based on Android 2.1.
How custom are we talking, exactly? Well, it's not quite like anything we've seen on a production Android device before, featuring a host of custom apps including the "Faves Gallery," a social aggregator for your most dearly beloved contacts; "myModes," a profile manager that can change the phone's themes and settings based on time or location; the Swype keyboard in place of Google's option; and the so-called "Genius Button," which seeks to extend Android's already decent voice command and text-to-speech systems by allowing you to do just about anything on the phone using your voice, hear messages read back to you, and so on. In the myTouch 3G tradition, the Slide will come in a selection of colors when it launches in June -- black, white, or red -- for a to-be-announced price. Check out T-Mobile's full press release along with our impressions of the device after the break.
We had a chance to play around with the handset a bit, and there's quite a bit about it that's an improvement over previous T-Mobile Android offerings. For starters, the keyboard is actually quite good, and without having that annoying G1 chin to block your moves, typing seemed pretty natural. The UI is a bit like a mashup of Sense and stock Android, with a little featurephone thrown in for good measure -- it's clear the carrier wanted to make this welcoming to beginners, and it's mostly succeeded. One addition we liked was that your recent applications are now docked in the notification window, which makes getting back to business a little easier. There are also a handful of Sense widgets here (yay), and despite the lower resolution screen (boo), it did feel like a roomier experience than the previous myTouch. One other plus worth noting: the Genius Button and corresponding voice recognition (powered by Dragon Dictation) was some of the best we've played with, nailing complex text message dictation (including the word Engadget) on the first try. Honestly, it put Google's stock voice recognition to shame. On the downside, we're not sold on the styling of this phone -- it's a bit plasticky and over-styled -- and we suspect that the lack of a more modern CPU (the Slide has an older generation Qualcomm chip) is going to spell trouble just around the corner. Still, we're holding final judgment till we have a review unit in hand.