Google G1 Phone Out Soon..

A Mobile telephone tailored to run on Google's Android software is to debut next week in New York City. US telecom carrier T-Mobile is slated to unveil on Sept 23 a 'Google phone' built by Taiwanese firm HTC and to have the device for sale in stores as early as Oct 08. Google is hoping Android will become the dominant operating system for mobile phones. It is designed to improve the speed and quality of using the Internet on handsets.

Android is being developed as an 'open source' platform, meaning anyone is free to use the technology to make mobile telephones compatible with the networks of multiple carriers. Google announced Android plans late last year and analysts reacted by saying it could potentially transform the mobile telephone market by providing service supported by advertising instead of subscription fees.

Google announced a 34-member group called the 'Open Handset Alliance' in Nov 2007 to develop Android, including China Mobile, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Telefonica, LG and eBay. ARM, Marvell, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, NEC, ST Microelectronics were reportedly among companies that demonstrated Android phone prototypes at Mobile World Congress.

Internet search leader Google took a giant leap into the mobile phone market on Tuesday, unveiling a handset developed with telecom carrier T-Mobile to compete with Apple's hot-selling iPhone. The T-Mobile G1, the first mobile device powered by Google's open-source Android software, will be available in stores in the United States on October 22 and will cost 179 dollars. The G1, which is a bit thicker but slightly narrower than an iPhone, will go on sale in Britain in early November and in other European countries served by T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, in early 2009.

The G1 offers many of the features of the iPhone and Research in Motion's popular BlackBerry including a touch screen similar to that of the iPhone, a trackball for navigation, high-speed Internet browsing, Wi-Fi, e-mail, instant messaging and SMS texting. It has a 3.0-megapixel camera with photo-sharing capability and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a feature lacking on the iPhone.

Internet retail giant Amazon.com announced shortly before the G1 release, in a direct challenge to Apple's iTunes, that the entire catalogue of the Amazon MP3 music store would be available on the new phone. The new phone has, unsurprisingly, been closely integrated with Google applications such as Google Maps and G-Mail and can display videos from YouTube, the video-sharing site purchased by Google in 2006.

Google is moving into the mobile devices market not to become yet another mobile phone manufacturer but to enable a large addressable market for its services and applications. The G1 is the first of a series of devices that will come to market and will be optimised to offer consumers a superior experience when using Google services and applications.

Google hopes the open-source Android software powering the G1 will eventually become the dominant operating system for mobile phones and make handsets compatible with the networks of multiple carriers. The phone, Google's first foray into the highly competitive mobile phone market, also will allow users to access the Android Market, where they can download software applications from developers around the world.