iTWire - T-Mobile/HTC G1: First Android phone arrives

T-Mobile/HTC G1: First Android phone arrives

by Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Page 1 of 2 After months of anticipation, the first Android-based phone has been unveiled. Does the T-Mobile G1 have what it takes? Register now to win a Canon EOS 500D The Google-backed Android platform from the Open Handset Alliance was intended to provide an environment that would not only allow the development of open-source applications for mobile phones, but would itself be open source. The thinking was that just as open standards have encouraged rapid innovation on the Internet, an open handset platform could do the same for mobile phones and ultimately provide an expanded market for developers. Consumers and businesses also stand to gain from reduced prices, as development costs would be spread over a larger number of units. Among the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance were T-Mobile and HTC, the companies that are bringing the G1 to market. The leaks about the G1 specs turned out to be pretty accurate. It's roughly the same size as the iPhone, but in addition to the touch screen there's a horizontal slide-out five-row QWERTY keyboard. It's a 2100MHz device (also 1700MHz in the US) with a maximum of 7.2Mbps HSDPA and 2Mbps HSUPA. If you're not a 3G service area, it also provides quad-band (850/900/1800/1900MHz) GSM including GPRS and EDGE. Claimed talk time from the 1150mAh lithium-ion battery is 350 minutes on 3G and 406 minutes on GSM. GPS is built in, along with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, a 3.2 megapixel colour camera and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR. But there's no mention of Bluetooth A2DP support, the omission of which from the iPhone has led to regular canings for Apple. Another design choice that may result in T-Mobile and HTC getting some stick is the use of a hybrid mini-USB and audio jack in place of a standard audio socket. Unlike the iPhone's 8 or 16G of internal memory, the G1 has just 192M onboard plus a microSD expansion slot containing a 1G card. That's handy for those who were taken by this week's announcement of slotMusic (albums sold on microSD cards), and you can always plug in a higher-capacity card if you need more storage. What about software? See page two. << First page < 1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>