[G1 General] ei8htohms:
It is with great sadness that I make this post. I've enjoyed reading XDA multiple times per day on average for the past year since I got my G1 and participating modestly when I could. I rooted my phone and got immense pleasure from tweaking it and installing various cooked ROMs thanks to the help of all the participants here and was even inspired enough to create and donate a font based on the Android logo back to the community to show my appreciation.

Due to the introduction of the Motorola Droid (are we still calling it a Sholes?) on Verizon, I've switched to get on a family plan with my wife for a reduced mobile bill, better reception/coverage and a pretty sweet Android phone in the bargain. Since my understanding is that XDA is HTC only, I don't suppose I'll be hanging out here much, at least after I find a place for Droid modders to congregate that is.

Since all of you probably love your G1 as much as I do, I thought I'd share a few initial impressions of the new phone and the switch.

Right now, this phone alone does not justify a switch to Verizon in my humble opinion. I know some will disagree with me (this phone (Droid) has a lot of fans already), but being spoiled by the speed and reliability of CM 4.2.3.1 on top of the tremendous customization potential, "stepping up" to the faster hardware of the Droid and the Android 2.0 OS (this version is VERY vanilla) is not all that much of an improvement frankly (yet).

If anything, it's made me realize how amazing Cyanogen's work really is, when I found that a lot of the minor bugs I found annoying in CM 4.2.3.1 are actually in the Android OS itself, even 2.0. Nothing major, just annoying lag at re-drawing the home screen icons, some oddball behavior around stereo bluetooth use still (although the Droid is VASTLY improved as far as signal strength with my Sony HBH-IS800 headphones), some browser weirdness (despite the mostly quite functional Flash support) and some other oddities. I hadn't used a stock OS in so long that I just assumed all those bugs were in the modded ROMs, not the Android OS proper.

The overall feel of the Droid is pretty great. Slicker and sleeker and more solid feeling than the G1, but with a slider action that is a little too resistive and not decisive enough (no real "break-over" action to pop it all the way open or closed), a sub-par direction pad for non-touch-screen navigation and a weirdly laid out keyboard (all of which I will presumably get used to). The screen is beautiful and large, but under-utilized when it comes to placing icons on home screens (still the same number of columns and rows) and I miss the presence of hard buttons for "call" and "hang-up" especially (although the touch sensitive buttons for "back", "menu", "home" and "search" work very well).

The camera is a huge improvement because of the resolution and the dual LED flashbulbs and even takes decent macro shots now, but is still quite slow to start up and capture a pic. The sound quality is very good in my opinion on the phone, speaker phone and for music and videos with and without headphones.

Once this phone gets "opened up" and I can play with the OS I'm sure I'll fall in love with it for real, but for now it's not enough of an improvement that I feel it justifies switching to Verizon for service that is almost always more expensive than T-Mo, a company I've always had good luck and positive customer service experiences with.

Since my wife has to have Verizon to get any coverage at work AND gets a Union discount, switching to get on a family plan actually saves us a decent chunk on our phone bill, so I have no regrets really, but I do miss my G1 a little already and may just keep the thing to plunk around on WiFi and flash a new ROM every now and again.

If you've read this far, thanks for your indulgence and thanks again for all the enjoyment XDA has given me and feel free to PM me with any advice about where the Droid crowd is gonna gather.