Having had my first hands on with Android today, I can only say one thing: Wow.

No offence to HTC, but the phone is nothing special. Not even slightly. In fact you stick Windows Mobile on that thing and I bet 99 per cent of the world wouldn't even notice it had come out.

It's nice enough, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing amazing... and the blocky section at the bottom is annoying.

But the OS... OH MY GOD. I'm not a fanboy of anything, never have been and can say with almost a million per cent certainty that I never will be, given my gadget cynicism that seems to exponentially grow by the second, but Android is going to change the face of mobiles.

Too much fruit

The Apple iPhone 3G launch gained WAY too much attention this year. Apple could have got away with zero marketing and the world would have still queued up for this device.

It's a great phone, and arguably the most complete handset ever made. But to give it that much hype, with fanboys whooping into my ear every time Steve Jobs breathed, made me want to break apart its plastic body into shards and ram them into the legs and arms of everyone that got over-excited at the prospect of another iPhone.

It's just a phone. For all those geeks that were on the verge of tears at the event, please watch the webcast again (you know you have it saved on all your terabyte hard drives with 25in HD monitors so you can watch THAT moment every day) and think... what am I doing?

There was none of that at the Android launch... probably mostly because the phone looked like it had been sat on and the end had bent.

And every time someone called the trackball a nipple I sniggered. What's wrong with me?

Mobile revolution

Anyway, the point is we are set for a mobile revolution people. Imagine a place where one day you wake up and realise that squirrels have been able to talk all along, and they actually talk a lot of sense, will take to you the pub for a couple of rounds on them, will chat footie (or whatever sport is your poison) then will go out on the pull for both of you and come back with a stunner (yours is a human, don't worry).

That's what Google's Android is like. The opportunities that a massive name like Google brings open-source to the world are WAAAAAY bigger than Apple's App Store, and with miles less pretension.

Anagram fun

Although the T-mobile G1 with Google (I hate even writing that, it's such a stupid name. Perhaps they should have made an anagram: Limelight begot woe G1. Makes more sense) is not the phone to bring Google-shaped glory to the world, it's a decent first effort, as is shown in our hands on.

The point is, in less than a year's time, when we have around four Android packing handsets on the market from players like LG, the mobile scene will be changed forever.

"A touchscreen phone you have sir? Please, download this programme. It makes your mobile look like the iPhone... but with more functionality."

"Dammit, Janine, this phone just won't play back this file format I found!

"That's OK Brady... just get on the Android Market... I'm sure I saw a programme that will do it for you there the other day while I was browsing."

You see? THESE ARE CONVERSATIONS WE'LL BE HAVING NEXT YEAR!

And mobiles will surely be cheaper too... licensing will be cheaper so therefore mobile phone will be less expensive... dare we dream of no more 24 month contracts?

Anyway... today we saw the birth of the new age of mobile phones. Before long, it will be a battle between Symbian, Android and perhaps Apple's OS.

And if we're lucky, Microsoft might even give up on Windows Mobile... we can but dream.