Swiping left on the keyboard shifts between compact and full qwerty, while swiping left toggles the status of the symbol entry keyboard. There’s also a T9 version that allows you to multi-tap a key to work through the letters. Long pressing the “123?” key takes you to the settings screen for Better Keyboard. The app also integrates with search boxes to do auto-completion, making searches that much faster. There’s a heathy supply of skins on the Android Market for Better Keyboard. Skins range across various colors and can be applied to both the compact and full version qwerty. Better Keyboard is $2.99 on the market, and well worth the price if you prefer a soft-keyboard over the hard one. 

One other cool thing that Google Voice does is to automatically transcribe your voicemail for you. It doesn’t do a perfect job yet, but it’s good enough. So now your G1 voicemail is searchable too. It may take a while for you to get used to using Google Voice, as it involves a central clearinghouse for all your calls. By using your carriers automatic forwarding service if you don’t answer your phone, plus GV’s “do not disturb” service, you can use GV just for visual voicemail alone. 

The settings screen brims with customization choices: Empty Screen, Wallpaper Scrolling, Auto Rotate – all of which allow you to really customize the look-and-feel of your G1. Some of the icon choices on the default theme feel a little tacky, but some of the themes are definitely very professional, with clean icons and graphics. This is a great home replacement and customization app with a responsive and active development team behind it that responds pretty quickly to bug fixes and issues. 

It also adds a soft keyboard to the Google search function, but that can be removed if you don’t like it. This application is highly customizable. If you enjoy minimalism in your user interfaces, this is the app for you. It is also highly skinnable, with several skins available on the Market (both free and paid). The Open Home application sells for $3.99 on the Market. 

Translated messages can be easily sent as a text message or an email with a single click. 

A large number of language pairs are available. This app is a must for anyone who travels a lot for business or pleasure. I would suggest using the text-to-speech feature only as a last resort. Otherwise, this little gem can get across the highest of language barriers. 

This application does with time what Locale does with location. It’s simple, trivial to configure, and once setup you can forget about it. 

Even the triggers are customizable, so you can have almost arbitrary triggers enable a profile. This is particularly useful when you want to use one power-hungry feature (like listening to music) while minimizing usage of other power-hungry features (screen, GPS, etc.) at the same time. 

Applications that you have backed up will appear in a separate list. This app can be used to uninstall applications as well. It’s a straightforward application that does a simple but important task well. 

This is a very clean app, easy to use, and makes bill payment a much less painful process. You’ll never have to worry about misplacing that T-Mobile bill ever again. 

You can choose between standard time and military time – you can change the colors of your clock until you’re satisfied. It’s simple and effective. Set your G1 on it’s side at night and turn off the backlight timer and boom you’ve got a new alarm clock – how clean is that?

Night Clock Application For T-Mobile G1 from Tmobile G1 Applications on Vimeo.