It works okay, but it's somewhat kludgy and the whole experience feels like surfing the web with a periscope. Having to move your finger down to hit a specific button to zoom in or out is a pain: when you want to zoom in on a particular point of a page (say, a small link), it's annoying to have to move your finger back and forth between the zooming and panning around the screen to find the part you want to see. 

Android's Browser doesn't support viewing or downloading PDF files, but I was able to save an image and view it using Android's own picture application. Repeated attempts to download an MP3 file from a web page caused Android's music program to crash. And, like the iPhone, Android doesn't support Flash video, though it also has a dedicated YouTube application. I wasn't able to view the QuickTime movie trailers on Apple's site either.

Play that funky music

Electronics companies have been trying to converge the mobile phone and digital media player for some time, with mixed results. Apple's success in that arena has been based largely upon their experience producing the iPod, while many phone manufacturers have struggled to integrate media-playing functionality.

The G1 is passable when it comes to media, but it does have some limitations. For one thing, the default 1GB of storage is pretty tight, especially when shared between videos, music, and applications. You can, however, buy larger memory cards (the G1 uses the microSD card format, which currently supports capacities of up to 16GB).