HTC Android phone set for dream launch in Australia - Gee!

By Stan Beer
Wednesday, 04 February 2009 01:32

Market

The first Android smartphone to hit the shores of the land down under looks set to arrive tomorrow courtesy of HTC and Optus. The HTC G1 Dream, with its landscape slide out keyboard and 3.2 inch screen launched in the US on the T-Mobile network last October.

HTC and market pundits are tipping that the new G1 Dream, powered by Google's much touted Android open source mobile operating system, could finally provide the sorely needed competition to Apple's iPhone.

Since the iPhone's release in mid-2007, various so-called "iPhone killers" have been thrust forward by rivals only to fail dismally. Lately, competitors have rather pathetically taken to producing poor new models which amount to nothing more than poor imitations of the iPhone's design.

However, the new HTC Android phone, which has a similar footprint and screen size (3.2 inch) to the iPhone, has a number of qualities that significantly differentiate it, unlike other would-be iPhone competitors.

Like other HTC touch screen models, the G1 Android smartphone has a slide out physical QWERTY keyboard designed to be used when the phone is held in landscape orientation.

If iPhone has a weakness in design (Apple and iPhone lovers would disagree), it's the lack of a physical keyboard for fast thumb typing. A QWERTY keyboard certainly makes it easier for most of us to compose email messages - as BlackBerry users will attest.

Brushing aside all the other features that you would expect to get in a smartphone such as Wi-Fi and 3G HSPA connectivity, Bluetooth, GPS, camera (3 megapixel),  for many the big advantage the new HTC Android phone has over the iPhone is that its operating system is open source.

What that means is that unlike the case with iPhone, it's open slather for application developers. They can forget about having to get approval from an authoritarian corporation in order to get their application accepted for the HTC G1 Dream or any other Android phone.

From most accounts, HTC's first Android phone is being outsold in the US by iPhone. However, it's still early days, the HTC is only on the T-Mobile network and only time will tell.

Meanwhile, here in Australia, there are a lot of eager testers looking forward to getting their first taste of open source smartphone telephony when HTC launches its new product here tomorrow.