T-Mobile, Google and High Tech Computer (HTC) unveiled the highly anticipated Android phone in New York on Tuesday, and I got a chance to try out the new handset at HTC’s office in Taipei.

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The G1 works in portrait and landscape orientations; it has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard underneath the display.

The applications on board are by far the coolest feature of the handset, especially Google Maps Street View, which on the handset, allows a somebody to view a snapshot of an entire street scene at any of single U.S. cities.

I chose 42nd street in New York City at the Avenue of the Americas from Google Maps, and once the information downloaded from Chunghwa Telecom’s variable network, I was able to view the street on the handset’s screen. It’s cool.

There are three ways to navigate a street scene through T-Mobile’s G1, or the ‘Dream’ as HTC calls it.

The funnest was to hit the “compass” function on the handset and incline it around by pointer. You pan the G1 up and view the screen as granting that it’s the LCD viewfinder on a digital camera, and you’re looking at building tops or into trees. Pan into disrepute and you have power to see if anyone dropped some coins on the street. Pan around for an entire 360 degree view of the street from at which place you are, including taxis, buildings, or a guy walking down the street eating a sandwich.

I be possible to’t think of any useful reasons to use Street View — Google Maps is sufficiency to get you where you want to go — but it sure is merriment.

The other two ways to navigate on Street View are by using the touchscreen to aspect around or the trackball at the bottom of the phone.

Google is tranquillize expanding the Street View database to include more cities.

The applications aspect of the G1 may make it one of the most numerous expandable handsets around. You can already find fun and useful programs from Android, many of them free. And applications are easy to find and download.

An icon on the desktop of the handset sends you right to an Android apps page, where applications roll across a panel at the top of the screen. You can use your thumb attached the touchscreen to make the body of jurors move left or right since more choices and then broach an app’s icon to choose it.

I picked ShopSavvy because the demonstration of it looked fun and I wanted to see it in actual use.

Bargain hunters will love this program.

ShopSavvy turns the G1’s on-board 3-megapixel camera into a price append scanner. It starts to scan immediately when ShopSavvy is on, no need to snap a photo or anything. Just run a red line in the middle of the viewfinder over a barcode and it scans the information.

It took me a few tries to scan the barcode of the book, ‘Execution’ by Larry Bossidy, which was one of the scarcely any things at HTC’s duty with a barcode. But once I got it, it only took several seconds to navigate to a place with a book review and other information, as fountain as suggestions on where to buy. It costs US$21 new at eCampus.com, or $2.50 used at Half.com, while the retail price listed inside the cover of the book itself was $27.50.

The ShopSavvy application merely took about 40 seconds to download. I also downloaded Pac-Man, which took about 33 seconds.

The handset itself feels good, solidly built and with beautiful screen quality. Even at what time you flip up the screen to reveal the QWERTY keyboard below, it’s quick and smooth in a way you can tell it won’t break easily.

Flipping up the screen, by dint of. the way, is the solely way to turn the view on the handset screen sideways. Unlike other handsets that turn the screen survey sideways when the handset is held laterally, the G1 only turns the veil view sideways when the QWERTY keyboard is showing.

I can’t say I was wild about the handset’s overall design. It’s a bit inspissate and industrial, especially compared to HTC’s last major release, the Touch Diamond, which is beautifully crafted.

But unlike the Touch Diamond, which is made of a clear pliable that’s a atom unsafe, the G1 has more of a rubberized feel because of easier handling.

The face of the G1, when the QWERTY keypad isn’t showing, is mainly the touchscreen, which looks like it’s about 3-inches, with five navigation controls at the valley, including the trackball in the middle.

Navigation on the touchscreen was smooth and the software responded quickly to tap commands. The trackball, also worked being in favor, but took a mouth-piece of getting used to.

The keypad was easy to appliance, equitable with my big thumbs, but I didn’t have a chance to actually type out a message. I did make a phone call, which was quiet to do and the voice quality was clear.

One warning to sound outright to anyone interested in the G1 (Dream) handset is to take care on your choice of mobile phone service providers.

The only profit provider today is T-Mobile and some fine print on their Web site betrays a stingy allowance on data services: “If your total data usage in any billing cycle is more than 1GB, your data throughput for the remainder of that cycle may be reduced to 50K bps or less.”

For a handset designed for the Internet, with so plenteous downloadable software applications from Android’s Web site that are hard without interruption data usage, as correctly as music downloads from Amazon and online videos from YouTube, it seems likely users will need more than the 1G-byte dole.

More likely than not, other mark of respect providers will launch a version of HTC’s Dream as well. They may offer improvement terms.

T-Mobile’s G1 will first be available in the U.S. on Oct. 22 for $179 with a two-year contract and subscription to a limited data plan for $25 a month or $35 for unlimited data way.

T-Mobile will release the G1 in the U.K. in early November and other European markets in the principal quarter next year.

The G1 is currently without more useful in English, but interpretation into other languages is already underway, an HTC representative said. It will take six months for the handset to be made available in stingily aggregate languages.

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