Ok! We have it! Meat with HTC-made T-Mobile G1 with pre-orders available on dedicated official webiste of T-Mobile. It will be available for shipping in US stores by October 22 and will cost 179$ with a pay as you go contract of 2 years.
T-Mobile will sell unlimited voice and messaging plans for G1 at 35$ on top of their regular voice plans. As was reported T-Mobile G1 will be SIM locked and no prepaid service will be available.
In UK, T-Mobile G1 will be available in the beginning of November, and in other T-Mobile’s European markets (Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands) the first quarter of 2009. In Europe T-Mobile G1 will cost not more then iPhone 3G.
- Its technical specifications are pretty nice for now days : a 3.2 inch touchscreen display, QWERTY keyboard, quad-band GSM/EDGE and dual-band UMTS support, GPS, Wi-Fi and a built-in accelerometer. Camera of T-Mobile G1 won’t support video recording and as was supposed before Bluetooth will support only mono headset (no stereo and no file transfers). The Bluetooth functionality will be enhanced later on.
- And now the most interesting part of this phone. T-Mobile G1 is the first Android device to see daylight. The G1 will make use of all Google online services such as Gmail (with push support), YouTube, Google Talk, Google Maps with Street View, AmazonMP3 marketplace for affordable DRM-free tracks and finally, Google’s own Android Market, which would supply the handset with third-party applications over-the-air. Somthing unique that G1 offers is the embedded compass, which syncs with Maps Street View allowing live 360-degree cityscape browsing just by turning the handset around.
T-Mobile G1 lacks a lot of features but it’s open to third-party developers.
To take a look at design we must say that it’s not impressing. Android OS looks a really lovely base, the first hardware to be based looks ugly. T-Mobile G1 reminds SideKick.
Can’t say that our hopes of one year came true. We see a poor iPhone replica with a QWERTY keyboard.
It seems Google must choose another producer instead of HTC to make its phone more attractive.
We’ll wait more.
