Google and T-Mobile formally announce mobile phone

Google and T-Mobile have officially unveiled the G1 mobile phone at a joint press conference in New York.

The phone, powered by Google's new Android operating system, will retail for $179 in the US. As well as a slide-out touch screen and qwerty keyboard, it will feature GPS, a tilt-sensor, and a three megapixel camera. Offering one touch access to the internet via 3G and wifi, and preloaded with Google applications such as StreetView, Gmail and YouTube, the phone has been pictured in demos playing games such as Quake, showing it to have significant amounts of processor power.

An Amazon leak earlier in the day revealed the handset's integration with the online retailer's own music store website. The site, which offers users the chance to buy DRM-free music from its collection of over six million songs, represents yet another front in the ongoing battle between Google and Apple, the company that produces the G1's closest competitor, the iPhone. Their iTunes music store has long been a popular choice for downloading music online, although it has come under much criticism for its approach to Digital Rights Management, the system by which music is encoded so that it can only be played on a limited number of other devices.

Google has also announced that applications for the G1 will be distributed through Android Market, an application store similar to that used by Apple for the distribution of applications for their iPhone. Android, the operating system debuting on the G1, has been developed in conjunciton with Intel, T-mobile and other technology companies, who intend to make the system open source to encourage developers to create their own applications for the platform.