What’s all the T-mobile G1 fuss about?

By Chad at 7pm

T-Mobile G1

You may have been hearing a lot about the T-Mobile G1 in the news lately and been wondering why everyone has been getting so worked up over a new phone. I am going to cover a few of its features and how you can try its new OS yourself. Hardware wise the G1 isn’t anything that special – it’s the typical HTC affair with a Qualcomm 528Mhz processor (probably overclockable), 192MB ram/256MB ROM, GPS, and all the rest of the features you would expect from a modern phone.

The thing that really sets the G1 apart from all the WinMO and blackberry devices of the world its the new Android OS. Android is developed by the Open Handset Alliance, that consists of Google, HTC, T-Mobile, NTT docomo, Intel, and many other big players. The other big thing about Android is that its based on Linux and like all things Linux its not only free but it is a very rich environment for developers. I could go on and on listing features and pros and cons of the OS but that would be very boring. Luckily, the Android SDK (Software Development Kit) is free and comes with a very powerful emulator so you can try it for yourself and see what you like and don’t like. To get the SDK, head over to the Android website and download it for yourself and in a few minutes (or hours if you still have 56K) you will have all the tools you need to not only run Android but develop for it. It’s important not to be turned away by all the files that the SDK comes with because all we are looking for today is the emulator. After you extract the files from the zip file you want to find emulator.exe (extension varies based on your OS) in the tools folder and like magic your have your very own G1. I would like to note that the SDK is currently in beta so if it doesn’t run perfectly its not Android but its probably the emulator and like all emulators it may run slower than it does on the actual device depending on your computer. Now that you have the SDK you can pick up the Eclipse Java IDE and a book on Java programming and maybe do something innovative. Check out the gallery to see the emulator running on my computer.

T-Mobile G1