Google’s G1 Android Handset Released Early November

There has been quite a bit of talk recently about the release of the new G1 phone by HTC using Google's Android.

Android is a open source smart operating system for mobile phones and is developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google.

The G1 which is the first phone to be released using Android will be available in the UK in early November and the rest of Europe 2009. The handset will be exclusive to T-Mobile (they are a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance) and will be free on price plans from £40 a month (no news on pays as you go), which will make it competitive with the iPhone on pricing, which is “free” for a £45 a month tariff from O2. You can pre-register with T-Mobile here www.t-mobile.co.uk/tmobileg1.

In the US the G1 Phone will be $179 - very cheap for a smart phone - and will be launched on October 22.

T-Mobile are touting the G1 to have a “Superior user experience” and they predict their Web 'n' Walk will get a 250% increase in Internet traffic.

The G1 has a touch-screen interface and a Sidekick-like keyboard, which will really set it apart from the iPhone.

With video you can swipe, frame and crop a photo to the homescreen. Street view and Google maps look great. Compass (GPS) mode moves as you move. Comes with Google Talk, Google Maps with directions and traffic view, street view with landmarks. Facebook looks good in the Webkit browser. The Music player has advanced features. The Android Market will be an app store for games and apps. It has a dedicated search button on keyboard, which competition authorities might take a good look at.

Unfortunately it does have some major downsides (for me at least!). There is no Exchange functionality (even the iPhone has this!), it can not be used as a tethered modem, and there is no 3.5mm headphone jack.

Exchange is a big one for myself as I use my phone for business and I like to synch everything, there is the opportunity for third party developers to build for this.

Engladget have confirmed that the G1 will use a proprietary ExtUSB connector, meaning you'll need custom headphones or an adapter to plug in your own, AND the adapter wont be available immediately at launch!

I have been quite excited by Android, and I love HTC (I just hate Windows Mobile) but I think this phone may some key features missing that will stop me buying it. I am confident we will see some brilliant phones using Android, and once more 3rd party applications are available this phone could very well be more appealing.

Android T-Mobile G1 Videos and Pictures

Hands on pictures from Engadget

Google Android walkthrough on the G1

Sony PM1 HD Snap Camera

With the Flip HD and Creative Vado doing well in the small video camera stakes, Sony is trying to get in there with this little beauty.

Sony PM1 Mobile HD Snap Camera certainly should put itself in there with its sharp looks, 27 degree swivel lens, 5MP sensor with 4x digital sensor to boot. It has five different scene selections for you to use including auto, sports, landscape, low light and back light.It sports a slightly small 1.8” screen but due to the fact the camera is so small, it doesn’t make the camera bad at all.

Everything can then be loaded straight onto your PC or Mac or can be directly uploaded to Youtube, Picasa and Dailymotion. Unfortunately, no news on a price yet.

Palm Pixi

Palm announced the follow up to the massively popular Palm Pre last week, named the Palm Pixi we previously blogged about it when it was codenamed Eos.

Not much has changed since then it is still a full qwerty candybar running Web Os but now we have some more specific details on it.

It should arrive in the states for Christmas and will not include Wi-Fi, it is EV-DO Rev. A 9(won’t work in the UK) with 8GB of storage onboard, 2 megapixel camera (with flash), and 2.63-inch, 320 x 400 capacitive display.

In terms of the processor etc it will include 2 Arm cores on 1 chips with one being a 600MHz applications processor, and a separate 400MHz modem processor to offload some of the heavy lifting.

The gaming capabilities will be handled by a 200MHz, OpenGL 2.0-supporting GPU and then a 320MHz application DSP to handle multimedia on the device.

So some quite impressive specifications for a smallish phone.