The T-Mobile G1 mobile phone manufactured by HTC is the first phone to be built using Google’s Android platform.
I was getting irrititaed with all that overhype around the Apple iPhone. Thank god for competition. Now we have a G1 to hit Apple where it hurts the most.
The G1, as you would already know by now, is the first phone to be built using Google’s Android platform. The manufacturer is HTC (who also have other cool phones on their portfolio) and it will be released in the US by T-Mobile on October 23.
The official press release doesn’t mention any dates for an Asia release but it’ll “be available in the United Kingdom beginning in November, and across Europe in the first quarter of 2009. Countries include Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands.”
The US price for the phone is a cool $179, that translates to Rs 8,264 (as per today’s conversion rate). But when a $199 iPhone costs Rs 31,000 intead of Rs 9,187 (via direct currency convertion), you don’t know by how much the G1 would make an Indian consumer poorer.
Here are a couple of G1 videos. One from T-Mobile and the other from HTC.
T-Mobile:
Download video [00:01:08 FLV 1.33 MB]
Download hi-res video [00:01:08 MPG 9.4 MB]
HTC:
Download video [00:00:45 FLV 13.5 MB]
Download hi-res video [00:00:45 MPG 9.4 MB]