Gingerbread? Camera? December 2, 2011

Reviewer:  King Slav  (Los Angeles, California) -

As a phone this model is more than adequate. As a camera it is a big disappointment with poor contrast, washed out images and very poor low-light qualities.

Don't bother with this phone (released in November 2010) if you are uncomfortable with the now outdated Froyo version of the android OS. After 13 months on the market and over 6 months of T-mobile promises, the Gingerbread OS update remains elusive for the vast majority of users.

Love this phone. November 11, 2011

Reviewer:  Elizabeth D. O. Connell  (Lexington, KY USA) -

I got the MyTouch 4g after my MyTouch 3g was lost in a car accident (somewhere out on Interstate 71 my poor 3g sits in pieces after being flung from my car). Originally I was a little disappointed; my 4g does not have a keyboard (although now they do make a MT 4g with a keyboard) and I did not like the battery cover design. HOWEVER I love this phone.

Battery life: A lot of people complain about the battery life however I have noticed I get 30+ hours with light usage (meaning checking mail four or five times a day, a few dozen texts, and roughly sixty minutes of talking), 15+ hours with medium usage, and 8+ hours with heavy usage.

Camera: I love the camera on this thing. I also had to buy a new camera to replace mine lost in the crash but I use the camera on my phone more. The quality of the pictures is surprisingly nice, it's really easy to use and super simple to upload to facebook/twitter or add on to a text.

Texting: Uh, I text all the time. A couple hundred texts a day at least. The only times my phone has trouble sending or receiving texts is when I'm suffering from spotty coverage, which usually only happens when I'm out in the mountains of North Carolina or West Virginia. Type touch keyboard is pretty easy to use once you get used to it. I love the amount of texts you can store as well. When I had the sidekick I could only store 100 texts and that just sucked.

Internet: I spend a lot of my time travelling to rural areas so I don't always get the reception needed for internet, however in my home town I get fantastic internet on this thing. Pages load fast and look great on the screen. I usually don't bother using mobile friendly pages because it's not needed. Admittedly if you have two bars or less your internet might be slower and videos will be a pain to load, but with decent reception I haven't had a problem. I've noticed a lot of people blaming the phone for what I truly think are just reception issues, some areas just don't get coverage as well as others. I've also noticed that moving at high speeds (like on the interstate or on a train) can slow down your loading times.

Mobile WiFi: I love, love, love this feature. I spend a lot of time travelling, like I said, so I'm not always in a place with reliable wifi. Also I don't always like using public wifi when working on more delicate things. With the Hotspot I can make my own password protected wifi network. I can even share it with a couple friends when I need to.

Music: My iPod touch also got destroyed in the crash so I decided to try loading music on my phone until I could afford a new one. The sound quality is great and the interface for the media lab is really easy to use. The only problem is that listening to music on your phone will burn through the battery pretty quickly. Expect 7 maybe 8 hours if you are listening to music the entire time. However the phone does really well with playing music and then using the internet or other apps.

Maps: I use my phone for a gps too, and it's actually pretty crappy for that. It's just not very accurate about where you are. The directions you get street by street are fine but if you're looking at the map it will tell you you are anywhere within like 500 meters of where you are, and on city streets that's annoyingly inaccurate. I mostly use it when I know my starting point and ending point.

Apps: All my apps run great. Some of the bigger ones are slow to download or update but they run fine. I use apps for banking, gaming, reviews, organization, etc. I love the wide selection available, especially of free apps.

SD Card: It comes with an 8 gb microsd card. I upgraded to 16 so I could store more music.

Tips to extend battery life: Turn off automatic updating. This means you'll have to manually choose to Dl your emails and facebook updates and weather, etc. but it really helps to extend battery life.

If anyone has anymore questions about the phone feel free to leave a comment and I will reply!

Incredible Phone April 19, 2011

Reviewer:  Robert T. Olson  (SLC, UT) -

I was a longtime blackberry user for years. I had some sad thoughts on ditching my beloved blackberry but it was just time. After doing a lot of research I was going to switch over to the Galaxy S 4g. I went to the t-mobile store to play with it and on a whim I tried this one. I was blown away by the speed of it. The 4g (or hspa) is so fast I can't even describe it. The phone just feels great in the hand and feels very heavy and well built. I was a little hesitant about the keyboard but you have three options. Swype which is awesome, you just swipe the letters, Dragon Diction where you just talk and you would be amazed how well it works, and the normal keyboard. I use the normal keyboard. It figures out the words you use most and predicts them and you can get very fast. I was very skeptical about typing long e-mails on a touch screen and I was super fast on my BB but I think I might be even quicker on this one. Plus it has an old type writer sound which is fun.

If you are already a gmail user you will love it even more since it syncs your contacts and calendar directly from google. Overall I would say this is an awesome phone. The one big con is the battery. Wow. The battery life is terrible. As long as you have a car charger near by or a separate charger at work you will be fine. Also the mobile tethering is amazing. I guess you can pay t-mobile 15 dollars extra for this service (but I haven't shhhhhhhhh) and your phone turns into a wi-fi hotspot and it works flawlessly! I was watching movies online on my ipad so fast. I even cancelled my AT&T 3G plan because you can surf the web through the phone so much faster than on AT&Ts network.

I can't really say enough good things about this phone. I could spend 3 pages telling you about everything this can do. To think this came out almost 6 months ago is even more amazing.

Pros
Blazing Fast Speed
Android
Very customizable
Wi-Fi Hot Spot
Keyboard
Screen
Camera
720P Video Recording
etc.

Cons
Battery is terrible

Good phone with some major issues June 27, 2011

Reviewer:  Cactoctin "Cactoctin"  (Maryland) -

I bought this phone in March 2011 after 10 years of using various Blackberries (which I liked very much). I wanted to be able to send/receive emails, texts, as well as make voice phone calls. I really like the solid, well-made feel to the phone, the ability to use most (not all) apps in landscape or portrait orientation, the very crisp and bright screen, the ability to use Google Maps with traffic updates (when it works), the camera, and the soft keyboard (yes, I've adapted from the Blackberry keyboard). I also found that I could move lots of songs from my iTunes library easily to this phone (one less gadget to carry).

But, this phone has the following problems for me:
- can't sync my contacts and calendar with my Outlook 2010 on my personal computer (not running Microsoft Exchange Server). Research seems to indicate that T-Mobile deliberately eliminated this standard Android feature in favor of forcing you to use Google calendar and contact management. As Google's products in this area are still significantly less useful than Microsoft Outlook, I find this mystifying. Why not let each customer decide on whether to sync with Outlook or Google? T-Mobile's marketing is less than clear in this area - many of their reps do not know that this doesn't work and tell customers that they can sync to Outlook. So I have to enter events and contacts on both the phone and my computer.

- can't change the font size on any of the apps (except the internet browser). On-line research seems to indicate that this is a known problem; only solution seems to be to root the phone and use some third party app. Not acceptable - I could change font size at will on my old fashioned Blackberry. I don't want to root the phone.

- speaker phone volume is abysmal. Makes video chatting useless without a separate headset.

- standard news widget stopped updating 3 weeks after I got the phone. T-Mobile tech support could not resolve the problem without wiping the phone. I replaced it with a third party newsreader app that is still working (in teeny font).

- standard stock market widget defaults to May 31, 2011 instead of to the current date. If you mess with it, you can force it to update to the current date but who has the time? And, the next time you look, it's back to May 31st. The data should be pushed without my intervention.

- lack of a to-do list widget. Should be standard. Yes, the Android market has several possible apps but when I saw the permissions/privileges they want, I declined. Why should a to-do list need access to the internet or my contact list?

I also have noticed that the battery doesn't last nearly as long as my Blackberry but I don't expect it to. The screen is orders of magnitude bigger, crisper, and brighter - can't expect that it won't require more power. Keep a cable for charging in the car and my briefcase.

So, in summary, the myTouch 4G is a nice hardware platform (except the speakerphone volume) with some big holes in its usability. Not being able to adjust the font and sync to my calendar/contact database are big problems for me. Standard T-mobile apps need more testing before release. A simple software upgrade would make this phone so much better.

Nice phone, bad reception. April 21, 2011

Reviewer:  S. McConaghy  (Tempe, AZ) -

At first I loved this phone - all the features I could want, easy email setup, web browsing with Flash and a nice interface. Over time, however, the problems became apparent. I do not know if it is 4G growing pains, but this phone will completely drop signal for anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. This happens on a daily basis, multiple times a day at my work where I have a consistent, full bar connection on 4G. This happens at home more frequently although I average only 2 bars on Edge. What is interesting is that at home, it will fully drop the signal and will go to WiFi calling and once it is in WiFi calling mode it will be at least an hour, if not a couple of hours, before it tries to connect back to the cell signal and this is when the phone is sitting in the area that has the best cell reception in the house; previous phones would only occasionally drop the call but they would never completely lose signal for more than a few minutes. I have tried having the settings with GSM only and with WCDMA only thinking that the phone was just having trouble switching between modes, but the issue still happens. This happens with both of the MyTouch 4G phones purchased. Something seems off about this phone's reception and regardless of how nice the interface is, if you can't make a call then it defeats the purpose of being a phone.

Beware, doesn't work with Exchange 2010 - KNOWN ISSUE (both T-Mobile and HTC) February 17, 2011

Reviewer:  Kevin Sheen  (Colorado, USA) -

Nice phone. Good form factor and does most things reasonably well.

But be aware that if your company is on Exchange 2010, this phone does not support it (see the HTC and T-Mobile forums). Not only that, there is NO date on when either company is estimating it will.

I suppose they spent a lot of time making sure that you could do Facebook updates without problems, but at the expense of not testing the phone (or intentionally releasing a defect) for most serious business users.

Worse yet, this is the only 4G Android iPhone type phone that T-Mobile has. The G2 has a slider keyboard.

Also disappointed that the T-Mobile store I upgraded from didn't call this out as an issue, but once I called Customer Care - they knew all about it. Not happy.

HTC FTW. December 16, 2010

Reviewer:  B. Khosa "balwinder"  (Union City CA, usa) -

it's a great phone
blazing fast with 4g.
iPhone 4g doesn't stand a chance against MyTouch 4G.

CRAP May 26, 2011

Reviewer:  Beth D. Rein "Beth" 

I have the red my touch and on day 15 after I got it, it started dropping calls. I've called many times and replaced the SIM card three times. This sunday it completely quit working. T mobil is sending me out a USED one but it's back ordered so there is no telling when I will get it and there isn't anything they can do. I wish I would have just kept my old crappy phone, at least it worked.

MyTouch vs. Iphone May 17, 2011

Reviewer:  Miss Kitty "Timid Observer"  (The lone star state) -

Yes, yes, I know Android doesn't offer as many apps. as IPhone and Iphone has a prettier interface, but seriously who needs 50,000 apps? I love the MyTouch's intutive (and attractive) interface and the 8 mega pixel camera. The MyTouch is definately a sturdier phone. I have had 1 MyTouch and my husband has gone through 2 IPhones in the same amount of time.

The case of the phone is thin and light, overall it has a sleek look to it. I like the roller ball mouse, which makes navigating easier.

Very Impressive but with a couple of drawbacks... April 6, 2011

Reviewer:  Peripateticus  (Austin, Texas) -

I have been using this phone for a month now, and overall I am quite pleased. How service will change after T-Mobile is under control of ATT remains to be seen. I like the flexibility of the Android system and various applications available for it.

Pros: Large enough screen for full utilization of available apps but not too clunky (like the Droid X); very fast internet speeds via wi-fi or the network; the included Dragon Dictation really works and is incredibly convenient for composing e-mails, taking notes, etc.; the built-in wi-fi hotspot provides an easy way to use the network to connect a laptop or netbook to the internet.

Cons: Battery life is disappointing, even with an automatic task killer installed; the track pad is pretty worthless and just tends to confuse the interface.

Love this phone March 3, 2011

Reviewer:  S1500  (twin cities) -

I had a plain 'ol flip phone before this. After doing some checking around, I decided to take the smartphone plunge, and decided on this. Why? I wanted a real keyboard instead of a touchscreen one. The result? I regret not getting this sooner. Love the android apps, the real keyboard & everything else. This is worth every penny.

Very pleased with it! February 17, 2011

Reviewer:  JS  (The OC) -

I did a lot of research before buying the myTouch 4G, and I'm very pleased with it. The phone definitely has a quality feel. Not at all plasticky. Although several tech review sites rank AMOLED displays higher than this phone's screen, I find it to be excellent. The only qualification is that it's hard to view in sunlight. The phone is very responsive. Not sure how much faster the soon-to-be released dual core phones can feel subjectively, since there's already no detectable lag when using most common apps on this phone. As for the battery, it does not last all day for me. But the PowerSkin (by Xpal Power) is the perfect solution. Lastly, I was worried about T-Mobile's cellular service, but I've been pleasantly surprised. The HSPA+ ("4G") speed is excellent, and voice quality is good. Reception so far has been much better than AT&T which I had for 2-and-a-half years before switching.

Not quite finished. May 27, 2012

Reviewer:  Stuart Reynolds "musotune"  (Palo Alto) -

I've had this phone for 2 years. It crashes about twice a week and takes a about 5 minutes to reboot.

Great Phone for the Price January 21, 2012

Reviewer:  W. Christian 

I got this phone for free by signing a two year contract with T-Mobile (it's normally $99 with the contract, but they were running a New Year's special if you bought online). It's my first smart phone and I couldn't be happier.

How much do I love thee oh phone? Let me count the ways. It's fast as hell, it plays video flawlessly, the screen resolution is excellent (way sharper than my iPod Touch), the OS (Android Gingerbread) is elegant, clever and intuitive, it has a front facing camera for video chat, it has a high quality speech recognition program that responds to voice commands to let you make phone calls, text, etc., its navigation program is pretty much just as good as my mom's Tom Tom (it speaks to you and everything) and it fits nicely in my pocket.

While this is my first smart phone, I've used my girlfriend's old iPhone 3G and newer iPhone 4 many times. While those are both quality pieces of phone, there is nothing those phones did that this phone doesn't do. It's noticeably better than the 3G, and at the very least just as good as the iPhone 4. In fact, it has better technical specs than the iPhone 4 in several instances (e.g. the iPhone 4 has 512 MB of RAM while the myTouch 4G has 768 MB.) Considering the price difference when compared with the iPhone 4 and 4S, there really is no reason to buy the iPhone other than the cachet of owning the latest Apple product. While I do think Apple makes good products, I still think their phones are a little overrated. I consider this phone in the same league as the 4S performance wise and I got it for free. If I had spend a bundle on one of the top-of-the-line Android phones it would have technical specs that blow the 4S out of the water. Plus, the old idea that while Apple products may be pricey, they are easier to use and better designed that their competitors is null. Android works pretty much exactly the same way iOS does, but has the added benefit of greater customize-ability and more available Apps.

So long story short, if you're thinking about getting this phone, do it. You won't regret it.

Not User-Friendly, No Battery, Terrible for Texting January 20, 2012

Reviewer:  Jinga06 

I hate this phone, feel duped because the Tmobile sales guy convinced me to buy this over another phone. I've had it for over 1 year and still hate it.

1. Battery drains too fast - if you use the phone for emailing or data searches on the internet, expect the battery to be dead within a few hours.

2. Texting is a pain - if you hold the phone "portrait," the keyboard is so small that unless you have toothpicks for fingers, you're going to misspell every word. If you hold it landscape, you can't swype or reach some keys unless you have "man hands." And the predictive text loves to suggest super useful words such as "goiter" when I just want to type "for."

3. It is not user-friendly - the next steps to do anything are not intuitive. So, you will spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to use the phone. Even the Tmobile techs are stumped - I called once to ask them how to do something with ringtones and he had no idea. I finally figured it out (it took like 10 steps when it should have taken 1 or 2 on a good smartphone) while I was on the phone with the Tmobile tech and he said, "Can you please teach me how you just did that?" If you have to teach the phone company techs how to use the phone, perhaps the phone is not so user-friendly.

ENERGY HOG! December 19, 2011

Reviewer:  Nancy Moore "NanO"  (Rockwall, TX, USA) -

This is my first experience with a droid type phone and it has so many features twas a challenge to learn to operate it. That being said, I spend time texting, ckg email, playing a couple of games now and then and on social networks. I don't stream movies or video, don't play music or any other ap that would take up a lot of power. But the phone has to be charged up to 3X per day. It's not like I'm spending ALL my time on the phone -- but the battery drains very, very fast. I'm looking for a replacement.

Slow operation poor battery life December 16, 2011

Reviewer:  David M. Patterson 

Got this phone about a year ago. The battery life is very poor. It only lasts maybe 5-8 hours on a typical day, and then it's dead. So make sure you take your charger cord to work or buy a car charger, otherwise if you have a flat tire on your way home you won't be able to call anyone.

Also, at times this phone will operate very slowly, with no explanation. Perhaps it is downloading updates to its operating system, but if so there is no indication. Impossible to uninstall certain programs that come with it, like AMAZON MP3 and FLICKR and FACEBOOK FOR MYTOUCH and QIK VIDEO CHAT (which doesn't work nearly as good as the FACETIME app on iphone, in fact, its so slow as to be worthless.)

I would not get this phone again, or recommend it to anyone else.

TERRIBLE PHONE TERRIBLE T-MOBILE March 12, 2011

Reviewer:  cckcsharp 

Purchased this phone as a new customer. The minute I received and began to set this phone up...problems began. Within 45 minutes I was on the phone with t-mobile. After nearly an hour of technical support, they determined the phone was faulty. I thought it was just bad luck and the new replacement would work beautifully....WRONG. 2 days later the replacement arrived and again I was on the phone with technical support.
Some of the issues I had:
Screen going black and staying black
phone would not make outgoing calls
phone would not text
phone would not connect to the internet
Customer service then determined that the phone was out dated on it's software and would need an update...oh, and this will take up to SEVEN DAYS for the new software to download. And to boot...I bought the phone when it was brand new on the market...how could the software need updating??? After all this I asked for a supervisor who was incredibly rude and told her I wanted to send back the second phone and cancel everything. She DEMANDED that I was now under a two year contract and was now obligated to them. I reminded her that I was a NEW customer and was still under my 14 day buyer remorse period. After arguing with her for nearly 20 minutes she finally realized I was right. I would also like to note that I originally just signed up for the limited data plan. In the two days that I had the two phones and ONLY USED THEM TO TROUBLE SHOOT WITH TECHINICAL SUPPORT...I had used ALL of the limited data. When I explained to the supervisor that my account should be credited for that because it was the fault of T-mobile for sending me two faulty phones and the data was used to trouble shoot...she told me that it was only fair that I pay for the trouble shooting somehow!!! OH...so now T-mobile is going to CHARGE you to troubleshoot a brand new phone that doesn't work out of the box!!! She refused to offer a credit to my account stating that is was my fault for choosing the limited plan and if I had selected the unlimited plan...this wouldn't be an issue. That was the final straw that caused me to cancel altogether with them. I would NEVER recommend anyone to T-mobile after that experience...and I would NEVER recommend this phone.

We were excited, and I wanted to love this phone! May 21, 2011

Reviewer:  Napali 

We were so excited to get these new phones. The first week or so was fine, but now, a couple of months in, this phone is simply not good. My wife also has the same phone, with the same problems.

First of all, I have deleted nearly all data including video, pics, and music, cleared chaches, removed unused apps, AND installed a new sim card provided by T-Mobile.

Here's the deal. Reception is horrible. It will vary from full bars to no service at any given location at any given time. Often times it will not send texts. Texts including photos typically take a very long time to send, even when the pics were taken with this phone.

The phone freezes up constantly. The video chat is a myth. I can't even watch a video on YouTube without major problems (first video won't play, Then, when I force-close the audio continues to play till I restart the phone).

As I'm sure you have read, the battery life is a problem, and in addition to those listed above, I have had many, many more.

This one is not for me August 9, 2011

Reviewer:  Gregory Yankelovich  (San Francisco, CA USA) -

I was excited about moving off my good, old Blackberry to the exciting new world of Android domination, but this was a very disappointing experience. The Blackberry phones were great business tools for me for the last 6-7 years, but their failure to provide reasonable web experience have pushed me away. The HTC phone and packaging were very impressive and I tried to get this thing working for almost 10 days, but the software is so screwy that I gave up and returned it to T-Mobile. During this trial I wasted hours of my time and customer support personnel's time, some of whom are very knowledgeable and some have no clue. Unless you consider diddling around with software to be a form of entertainment, and have time to do it, stay away from Android - there are other options for people who are not Apple "fan boys". Meanwhile, since I was really impressed with HTC product quality, I chose to go with HD7 Windows phone.