Wireless News

T-Mobile officially announced their G1 smartphone this morning, the first handset to use Google’s Android platform.  The G1 is a dualband UMTS, quadband GSM slider with a full QWERTY keyboard, trackball and 3.2-inch 320 x 480 HVGA capacitive touchscreen for navigation; it also has GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and a 3.2-megapixel fixed-focus camera.  Our sibling site Android Community were on hand to get some hands-on pictures and video.

G1 talktime is estimated at up to 350 minutes WCDMA or 406 minutes GSM; standby at 402hrs or 319hrs for WCDMA or GSM respectively.  The battery, unlike that of the iPhone, is removable.  However HTC have used their own mini-USB connection rather than giving a normal 3.5mm headphone socket, so you’ll need an adapter (apparently not supplied in the box as standard) if you want to use your own cans.  Internal memory is a mere 256MB ROM and 192MB RAM: all storage is via microSD, with a 1GB card included and up to 8GB supported.

From left to right, the Apple iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1, BlackBerry Bold and Samsung Instinct.  The G1 is narrower than all of them, but longer and certainly thicker.

The T-Mobile G1 will be priced from $179 with a new two-year contract.  Two new data plans are on offer, in addition to your normal voice plans: one, for $25, offers unlimited data and a set amount of bundled messages, while for $35 you get unlimited data and messages.  However T-Mobile don’t seem keen to stress out their new 3G network – the data cap is apparently a mere 1GB.  The G1 will be available on October 22nd.