gphone

The T-Mobile G1 smartphone, which comes out October 22 for $179, is a serious upstart challenger; a device that provides an easy-to-use touchscreen display, lets you download music directly to the device from the Internet, and has a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. Using the G1 is intuitive and enjoyable. It reveals to the world once again that every other smartphone you've ever used besides the iPhone (Motorola, Samsung—are you listening?) now seems clunky and old-fashioned.

Straight away, let me say: I am NOT an unquestioning fan of the iPhone—I have often come close to throwing my buggy iPhone 3G out windows when it locks up and crashes. But the idea of the iPhone is so compelling; it’s hard not to judge other phones by that standard—especially when they seem to be aping the design. So how does the G1 do?

At this point we've known for a while that the much-talked-about gPhone isn't actually going to be a single device, but a whole slew of them running Google's Android platform, but that doesn't mean the buzz is dying out. Now CNET says there's a new race heating up, as Google and Apple vie for the attention of independent software developers.