T Mobile G1 “GooglePhone”

The iPhone has dominated the smartphone landscape for more than a year. But now, Apple is about to meet a challenger in Google that could halt — or slow — its progress.

The T-Mobile G1 is the first smartphone to use the Android platform announced last year by Google and a number of other partners. Based on Linux, Android is an open source project that has hundreds of developers who work on different applications any phone utilizing Android can use.

T-Mobile and Google have partnered to bring us the Andriod handset, but the G1 integrates Google's online services into the operation of the handset, which will probably pose a direct challenge to both Windows Smartphones and the Apple iPhone.The G1 is being made by HTC, who has a long history in the market of Windows Mobile devices and has had partnerships with T-Mobile and several other carriers.

The G1 is very similar to a typical Windows smartphone in terms of specification - there’s a large 3.2″ 320 x 480 pixel touchscreen display, a 3.2 megapixel fixed-focus camera, 3G and 3.5G support, WiFi, GPS (plus a digital compass), microSD expandable memory, Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity.

The main functions are controlled with a trackball (a little like modern BlackBerry devices), plus there’s a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Annoyingly, the T-Mobile G1 has one of HTC’s combined USB/audio sockets which means that you cannot use a standard headset without an adaptor. It’s quite a heavy device at 158 grams.

The processing power of the G1 clocks in at 528Mhz and features a Qualcomm MSM7201A which has 192MB of RAM. This specification is very similar to HTC’s other Windows devices.

The G1 also support GPRS and EDGE data, and has both 802.11 b and g WiFi. The expected maximum talk time on 3G is around the 6 hour mark and has a whopping 16 day stand by time, partly due to the large 1150 mAh battery.



Company

High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC)

http://www.htc.com
Spec Data

* Price as Tested: $179.00 List
* Service Provider: T-Mobile
* Operating System: Other
* Screen Size: 3.25 inches
* Screen Details: 320x480, 65k-color capacitive TFT LCD touch screen
* Camera: Yes
* Megapixels: 3.1 MP
* 802.11x: Yes
* Bluetooth: Yes
* Web Browser: Yes
* Network: GSM, UMTS
* Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100, 1700
* High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
* Special Features: Music
* Notes: Price: $179 w/ two-year contract