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Huawei is a very interesting company. They're heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. There's been a lot of controversy surrounding their products in terms of intellectual property infringement and military ties.
Take a look at the top tier of Android phones right now and you might notice something. They all kind of look the same. Black front fascia, large touchscreen, minimal waistline. Boring, right? Well that's just the way things are going. Alternatives to the slate way of living are becoming increasingly rare, which puts the HTC Desire Z with its hardware keyboard in an intriguing light. With its metallic accents and suave grey pallet, the Desire Z cuts a different path. So how do I mean rare? If you want a top-level QWERTY Android phone in the USA you have a fairly limited selection to choose from: Sprint has the Samsung Epic 4G, Verizon the Motorola Droid 2 and T-Mobile the HTC G2. The first two there are CDMA which leaves only the T-Mobile handset in contention for GSM customers, unless your carrier happens to stock the Motorola Milestone as well. On either side of the Atlantic, QWERTY sliders appears to be a dying breed whichever way you look at it, so I was curious to see whether or not the added bulk and complexity of a hardware keyboard was worth it. Having had the phone for a couple of months, let's take a look at this device from a hardware perspective, pertaining to both the HTC Desire Z and T-Mobile G2.
Who says the G2's processor is slow, eh? While its stock 800 MHz clockspeed didn't break any benchmark records, it's showing itself to be nicely capable of overclocking. Unlike the QSD8250 in the original Snapdragon, which gets rather unstable anywhere past the 1.13GHz (+15%) mark, the MSM7230 in the Scorpion of the G2 sails right on past +100% with apparent stability. The kernel was posted on XDA-Developers by member Flippy125, with the usual "NOT MY FAULT IF-" disclaimers, but also noting that the kernel runs stably for him.
You're probably aware of one of the slightly more irksome facets of the G2 that is stymying attempts at custom ROMs, namely the locked down /system partition, where the OS is kept. Heretofore it has been impossible to tinker with this internal memory in a permanent fashion. All alterations were reverted on the next boot, leading to solutions like Paul O'Brien's VISIONary soft-root.
The G2 may have a next-gen MSM7X30 processor, but unfortunately, HTC and T-Mobile have decided to clock it at a paltry 800MHz. That's not to say it's unbearably slow; judging by the early reviews, quite the contrary. But still, just imagine what could be done if some wise guy out there overclocked it to something more along the lines of... oh, 1.42GHz.
With the G2 already getting a non-persistent "soft-root" solution, it was only a matter of time before someone combined it into a nice, user-friendly package. Stepping up to the plate (or rather, the crease) is Paul O'Brien, the founder of UK smartphone website MoDaCo, well known for a myriad of clever hacks.
Over at XDA-Developers, Hitorii just got his sweet new T-Mobile G2. Naturally, before even opening the box, he went and told everyone about it. Wouldn't you? I am super jealous, anyway.
While the teaser site for the T-Mobile G2 has been up for quite some time now, HTC, the company actually manufacturing the device, have been quite reticent about its specifications and what’s driving that stock Froyo goodness. Of course, we’ve known of its MSM7230 and various other details for a couple of weeks, but it’s nice to see the official specs solidified on HTC’s website. There are no surprises contained within, but something about the confirmation of what was once nebulous rumour can’t help but bring a warming pulse to every Android’s circuitry.
It seems to be the trend nowadays that you know everything about a device before it even gets properly announced, and while it makes for plenty of blog-fodder, it sort of spoils the fun of waiting for new things to come out.
Based on a tweet by Cyanogen, the G2 isn't going to be sporting another rehash of the Snapdragon family of chipsets that has come to dominate HTC devices for the past 6 months.
Details are scarce on this one, but a new shot of the HTC Vision has been leaked. With the shot came a few new details: it’s likely headed for T-Mobile (either in the US, overseas, or both), and will be named the G1 Blaze.