Mousetrap blog: First web reaction and A $250,000 snub

The T-Mobile G1 is great. The iPhone is better.

The first mobile phone powered by Google was launched yesterday, ready to do battle with Apple’s iPhone for the top spot on many people’s Christmas gift list.

The long-awaited smart phone, the T-Mobile G1, which was unveiled at a press conference in New York, will go on sale in the US next month, and is expected to hit British stores by early November.

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The event, featuring whooping and cheering more often associated with the unveiling of new Apple products, revealed the first handset to run on “Android” — Google’s new software for mobile phones.

The arrival of Android signals the opening round of the battle between Google and its rivals, such as Nokia and Apple, to create software for the next generation of mobile phones that allows users to connect seamlessly to the internet.

A Google spokesman said that, these days, using phones “does not just mean a phone call, but rather access to the world’s information” and that mobiles will be one of the most important ways to connect to the internet in future.

However, when The Times was granted a first glance at the new device, the phone did not seem to offer a ground-breaking feature to rival the “wow factor” of the iPhone’s touchscreen. Instead, the G1 happily adopts the best features of the iPhone and BlackBerry — two of the best smart phones on the market.

It has the easy-to-navigate and intuitive touchscreen, like the iPhone. But, like the BlackBerry, it has a qwerty keyboard, which slides out, and a “trackball” that helps you navigate around the screen.

The internet giant emphasised that the phone is not a “Google phone” per se, as it is manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese manufacturer, and will be offered exclusively by T-Mobile in Britain. To obtain the phone, customers must sign up to an 18-month contract that costs £40 a month. But it seems the product will be sold on the back of Google street cred.

Early versions of the phone were called the “Dream” but the final handset has been named the “G1”. Instead of the manufacturer’s name on the back, it reads “with Google”. As a result, it is Google’s brand and reputation that will be enhanced — or dented — by this phone.

The phone may represent a threat to Apple’s iPhone and iPod, as the new device is able to download digital music from amazon.com. As a result, about six million tracks will be available on the G1 at the touch of a button.

However, the G1 cannot compete with Apple’s sleek design. At first touch, the G1 looks and feels plastic and clunky by comparison.

The mobile allows easy access to Google’s range of online applications, such as Gmail, its personal e-mail service, and YouTube. The G1 also allows you to see Google Maps in “street view”, so you can explore cities virtually, as if standing on the street corner itself.

However, the buzz surrounding the G1 has less to do with ground-breaking new features, and more to do with Google’s innovation — the Android operating system that runs the phone. Google’s aim is to get more people online, using search and advertising services from which it makes money.

And there are more Androidpowered phones to come, with the manufacturers LG and Samsung likely to reveal mobiles that run on the software next year.

Google also hopes to take the lead over Apple by making Android “open source” — meaning that people will not be charged to use it on their handset or for writing applications for it.

This means that anyone can write programs that will run free of charge on an Android-powered phone.

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