Internet search giant Google launched its long-awaited mobile phone on Tuesday, unveiling a handset developed with telecom carrier T-Mobile to compete with rival 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, 20 dollars cheaper than the iPhone 3G.
Cole Brodman, T-Mobile chief technology and innovation officer, called the G1, built by the Taiwanese firm HTC, a "game-changing" device for Web surfing which will "power a new mobile Internet of the future."
The G1, which is a bit thicker but narrower than an iPhone and comes in three colors, black, white and brown, 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 also has a Global Positioning System (GPS), a 3.0-megapixel camera with photo-sharing capability and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a feature lacking on the iPhone. Unlike the iPhone, however, the G1 cannot shoot video.
But in a direct challenge to Apple's iTunes, the entire library of Internet retail giant Amazon's MP3 music store is available for purchase on the G1, more than six million songs.
The new phone has, unsurprisingly, been closely integrated with Google applications such as Google Maps and G-Mail and can play videos from YouTube, the video-sharing site purchased by Google in 2006.
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