Hands on: T-Mobile G1 Android review

The other problems, like no Flash compatibility and lack of Exchange support are less of an issue - the developers will get their hands on these problems and hopefully fix them soon.

The interface is quick and light, just like in the emulation videos. The swiping is the same as many other touchscreens out there, and while it isn't as good as the iPhone is still very accurate and does what you need.

However, the icons sometimes weren't pressed straight away when we tried... we hope that's down to early versions of the phone.

Fun apps

The barcode scanner function is a lot of fun, though hardly the thing people have been crying out for on their mobile phone. It works easily and you can use an online price comparison website to find other similar products... Android is looking for UK centric applications at the moment as apparently there's a lot of focus on the US side of things.

GPS is quick and very accurate... the Google Maps application with Streetview and all the rest works really nicely, though we couldn't find any Streetview options in London. Great.

The internet was fine and dandy, and loaded pretty quickly, but didn't really jump out of the screen in the way other mobile browsers do... but to be honest it is the full internet from the word go, and that can't be sniffed at when some of the browsers of old failed to even show text at times.

The fact of the matter is Android ISN'T the T-Mobile G1, it's just the interface on the otherwise quite boring handset. But the media has got into such a frenzy about it that people are believing that the G1 could seriously be THE iPhone contender of the year.

It's not.

However, the phone is great when you get it out of the box, in the same manner as the iPhone. You can see the icons straight away, see what you want to see and add what you want to add, then just drag and drop them around when you don't want them. Apple did it first, and Google is building on that.