I have to admit that I’m not wowed by the new G1. In a world where the iPhone has hoisted aesthetic expectations to another level, this phone’s appearance flops. Hard.

To my mind, a big factor in its ass-ugliness is the slide-out keyboard. This is a touch-screen phone. As the iPhone and a whole range of Samsung touch-screens have shown, virtual keyboards make fine replacements for their physical counterparts. Aside from its nannying prevention of some particularly ripe cursing aside, I’ve never had any major problems getting through an SMS or email with my iPhone.

So when I see the physical keyboard on the G1 I’m forced to wonder why it’s there. Is this a device aimed at the hero of the Windows Mobile ads? The one who wants to edit spreadsheets on the golf course? And why would he be doing that on his 3-inch phone screen? Hell, if he’s got the sort of job where urgent last-minute changes to spreadsheets are likely enough to influence his choice of phone, I don’t think he’s ever going to get to the golf course.

One of the reasons that the iPhone has done so well is the experience of owning it. There are now four people in my immediate family - myself excluded - who own one, and its beauty and simplicity has been the major factor in their decision to throw down cash. And not one of them has installed a third party app.

Like Steve Jobs said “The killer app (on mobile phones) is making calls”. When you start catering for the mystery people who need to update a spreadsheet, finesse their latest novel, or tweak the code on their robotics project, you forget about the people who just want to make calls. Focus on doing what your platform is good at, and good things will happen. Design karma.

Completely unstructured brain doodle

Deviating from the script a little, I’m not sure how much longer making a call will be the killer app of a phone. Some of the things I’ve seen from Jan Chipchase look at the exact opposite of that idea: is a phone still a phone if it can’t make a call?

Certainly, in some of the work I’ve been doing, a call is just one mode of communication that a phone can support. Whether it’s the main one, the killer app, depends on the context of the communication: the relationship with the recipient, the physical context - including availability - and the texture of the message itself. Look at the rise of SMS and, in the States in particular, mobile IM as evidence of phones being already well beyond the status of portable call-makers.

Still don’t see the spreadsheet thing, though.