I finally took the plunge into really-smartphones with the T-Mobile myTouch. Previously I owned a Blackberry Pearl, and I was really interested in a Google-based phone, since I was using Google sync on my blackberry anyway to keep my calendars and phonebooks in-sync.

So far, I’ve had it for a few days and so far, I really like it, but it is not without its’ shortcomings.

The physical device itself is sleek and nice to hold. I’ve ordered a custom case that hasn’t come yet, but I really like the style and design and can’t wait to protect it a little better. The standard mini-USB cable works great, although there is no dedicated headphone jack, this really isn’t a problem for me as I rely entirely on bluetooth for audio. There are only a few buttons and no keyboard, but I feel like it could be done with fewer buttons. There is a trackball which is nice, but I rarely use it. It doesn’t get in the way though, and it’s good to have as an input.

The software that comes with the phone is all very good and tends to be snappy and responsive. The on-screen keyboard takes some getting used to but with a vibration-feedback option, I’m getting better – it takes a little bit more pressure to use the screen on this than an iPhone.

The thing I was really dying for was Google integration, and it is great on all sides. It’d be nice if the Gmail app could handle more than one account, but it works pretty well anyway – I have it integrated with my Google Apps for Your Domain account with no problems.

Now for the “killer” apps – many of the bundled apps that T-Mobile provides are in fact, fantastic. However, some of these, such as “Freshface”, a skinning app, make the user experience awful and slow the phone down significantly. I do not recommend it, and uninstalled it myself pretty quickly. This tends to be the par for course for many apps, there is a lack of quality in some stuff currently on the market and a lot of them seem to slow the phone down significantly. I’ve installed a lot of stuff and ended up uninstalling to get back the responsiveness.

There are a few fantastic exceptions, such as the game “Cestos” (online mutliplayer), and “Google Sky” (Not that useful in LA where you can’t SEE the stars, but WOW factor is high)

Battery life has been surprisingly high, and Qik video-streaming live to the internet is an amazing feature! The camera quality isn’t breathtaking, but it’s probably on-par with my own, old “regular” digital camera.

Another letdown is the official Google Voice app doesn’t yet support Google Apps accounts, only accounts with @gmail extensions.

This is a great phone and very fun to use, reliable for the most part, but it does lack some of that iPhone polish. On the flip side, the plan wasn’t too expensive, the phone looks awesome, and I enjoy the relative open-ness of the platform and fully expect the App offerings to improve rapidly with the release of several more Android phones this year.