This is probably one of the most anticipated releases in the PDAPhone world in quite a while... maybe even more so than the iPhone. The importance of this product to the market is significant. For those that have been in the PDAPhone world from the beginning... going back to the era of the Samsung i300... the Handspring Treo 270... the T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition... wasn't that long ago but it seems like an eternity. Those devices would pretty much do everything that you can do today, albiet a bit rough around the edges and much slower. Then along comes Steve Jobs and the iPhone and the mainstream media woke up and thought it was a new day in technology. The reality was that it didn't do anything we couldn't do five years ago with these other devices, but it had the Apple polish and appeal, and the media took off with it. Finally PDAPhones made it to the mainstream... but from Apple?

Can anything slow down Apple? Microsoft, Palm, and RIM are trying to rally and keep their share of the pie, but Apple is soaring pretty high right now and taking a huge piece of it. Then a few months back Google announces that they can play with one letter phones too... iPhone... meet gPhone. Well today Google is announcing their first product... together with T-Mobile and HTC... appropriately named the G1. Its funny how history repeats itself. Once again we'll have the Apple proprietary hardware/OS competing against the alternatives. With Microsoft, we have a so-so OS that runs on lots of different hardware that has minimal differences. And now we have Google coming in with the Linux alternative to take on the other two... just like in the PC world. But Linux has failed to really put a dent in the desktop market... can it take a sizable share of the PDAPhone market. Only time will tell, but the game starts today.

So what is the G1? First off, its made by HTC who has probably made more PDAPhones over the years than any other company, and today makes a significant share of the devices that run Windows Mobile. So they have a formidable player to produce the hardware, and the G1 seems to be very similar in construction to many of the latest Windows Mobile devices. While it looks a little bit clunky, early reports indicate that it feels good in the hand and seems to be well layed out. Its big advantage over the iPhone is that it has a full slide out keyboard. But the real story is the new part... the Android OS.

The Android OS is brand new, so it will take some time for things to really come together with 3rd party apps, and I think that is one of the real keys to this. Apple started out with very tight controls on the iPhone and 3rd party apps, and continues to do so. They are very aware of their reputation and the user experience and want that to have a certain quailty and feel. Google is more likely to be more loose with this and it could result in many more applications being developed, but it could also result in more poorly written applications and a lack of consistency in the user experience. Early reports are that the OS even needs some work on consistent interface.

Google has been working on applications for the desktop for some time now, and will bring a lot of that work to Android. The browser is a scaled down version of their new Chrome browser and will have a lot of capabilities like recognition of email addresses, phone numbers etc. The G1 will have one touch access to Google Search, which is something that most people would use frequently. The question is how well the browser will be to control and view full sized webpages. The iPhone does a decent job with this and set a new standard for PDAPhones. Google certainly is capable of doing just as well.

The G1 will have a Home Screen that you can easily get to with one click of a hardware button. This screen looks more like a traditional desktop and the user can drag and drop favorites to it. It will have a music player that is connected to Amazon's music store, but it doesn't appear to have any kind of iTunes-like desktop sync program. But I've managed just fine by just copying my MP3s to my memory card with Windows Mobile, so I don't see that as a big deal. Google has built-in easy access to Google Maps, Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube, and their Calendar. This should all be well received and should work similarly to their desktop counterparts. I'm a big user of the Google Toolbar and in particular Google Bookmarks. I'm hoping that Android will pick up that up too if it hasn't already.

These are exciting times when another big player enters this space.