[G2 and Desire Z General] OoTLink:
I want a white iphone :P

Despite running unmodified G2 firmware, I'm not sure the adjustment (back) to iOS would be easy. No, I've never had an iphone, but I have had an iPod Touch that I used a lot and even using that these days is awkward after using the G2 for a few months. However, that iPod is a 1st gen Touch, so it doesn't run firmware 4 and it lags quite a bit.

Still, I'd miss the vanilla weather app (love the graph!), and the notification system (iOS is archaic in this department!)

It's funny, Apple markets the iPhone to hipsters with seriously active social lives, yet the OS stinks at managing lots of incoming action. WTF is up with that?

I know this will come across as blasphemy, but when I purchased the G2 I only did so because T-Mobile was offering it to me for free, and it was definitely the best free phone at the time. Then again, I didn't want a MT4G (which was the best non-keyboard phone at the time), so I suppose that would've been it unless I wanted an HD7 (which I didn't really).

Before owning the G2 I thought keyboard sliders were something asinine, particularly landscape sliders because they're too big to quickly thumb type on if you have small hands, and either way it adds more complexity to the phone, shrinks the battery space, and makes the damn thing bigger. I still stand by those thoughts, but after playing with an emulator I can understand why people love hardware keyboards.. well, that and the software keyboards the G2 comes with are really awful (especially swype... especially in landscape mode *SHUDDER*)

Then again, if you picked up flext9 for free off amazon last week, we wouldn't be having that discussion right?

I still think the G2 would've been a better phone without the slider (see the Sensation). However, and perhaps the Z hinge plays a role in this, the keyboard grew huge on me fast. I like the way it slides open/closed, and it doesn't feel all shifty in the hand (sliders tend to wobble clockwise/counter clockwise and stuff).

That, and the matte silver/grey looks much much nicer than a generic shiny black thing. Very nice looking phone for what it is. Not a perfect design by any means (the notification lights suck, the orange/green charging LED is ugly, the volume buttons suck ass, the camera button fails, there's no real dock system, no inductive charging, the external speaker aint so hot, and no HDMI port for showing off). Then they went with that silly trackpad for who knows what.. they could've made the phone a little bit shorter.

My biggest gripe is that T-Mobile STILL used some weirdass "Vanilla" android with a locked bootloader instead of just using generic vanilla Google 2.2, then we'd be using 2.3 instead of waiting/hoping/begging/using CynogenMod. What could they have possibly gained from us by doing that? Nothing? It's not as if any of the included apps generate any revenue for the big pink cloud in the sky.

Still, I can't really say I have phone envy against other android phones - the sensation is the closest thing to phone envy and it pretty much looks/works the same. When phones are 4x faster and get 10x the battery life of my G2 I'll have some serious android envy.

OTOH, I could have a slightly more stylish white tuna can with millions and millions of extremely cheap cases on ebay, a nice dock that actually works on a lot of things that I own, and many more good games/apps than the android market has. That, and a phone that isn't worth less than what I paid + the ETF the day I open the box.