Preorders for the first Android phone to begin on Sept. 17th

Finally, the first Android phone seems to be close to release.  T-Mobile is rumored to be having a presale for the HTC Dream (G1) starting on Sept. 17th and running for one week.  It's supposed to run $150 for existing T-Mobile customers and the presale will only be available to those customers (a national public launch will come later).

No word about when people will actually be taking delivery of the phones, but T-Mobile and Google have both repeatedly said it will be before the end of the year.

via TmoNews

Here's the leaked video of the Dream running Android from a few days ago:

The closer the arrival of Android gets, the more excited I get. It's about time someone else besides iphone users get a decent UI experience on their phones.

We'll see how RIM does with the Thunder and if the Blackberry Touch interface will be value-added or a bolt-on disaster.

What's your gut instinct tell you about the Thunder and Touch?  RIM is long overdue for a significant enhancement to their OS and/or feature set.  Hopefully they can put something compelling together.

Given this is RIM we're talking about, my guess is they'll hit it out of the park.  They are (hopefully) wise enough to  to create customer focus groups and such to see if the interface is good or not, and smart enough not to release it unless it is good.  Their business market share depends on these releases.

While I'm excited for Android, I don't plan on being an early adopter. I'm gonna let some of the kinks be worked out in the wild before I shell out money for an Android device.

You could probably just try and install Android on one of your existing devices, if you're the adventurous type.

Is that going to actually 'supported.'  It'll be incredibly interesting to see what devices people are able to get it installed on.

Well, since Android is supposed to be open, then I think that should make it so that you can install it on any mobile device so long it meets the system requirements.

On PPCGeeks I believe some had demonstrated getting an early version of Android working on HTC Touch hardware.  The interface worked, but basics like phone calls didn't.

I'll have to look into it to see if perhaps I can get it booted up on my Touch.

Looking at the video, I'm not yet convinced of the 'decent UI experience' 

I know they aren't done yet, but the UI on that prototype doesn't look all that great. I mean, there is a menu bar at the top of the screen, then a home(?) screen with one icon on it, and a window with a large set of icons that pops up over that, and at one point they go into a blank screen with some ugly looking buttons at the bottom.

The mere fact that its windowed makes me a little worried... one of the iPhone's biggest usability pros is that you can really only do one thing at a time. Same with the old Palm OS. You can have processes running in the background, but your interface only lets you do one function. It wasn't clear from the video, but it doesn't look like Android will be that way.

 Teej just PMed me with a much better version of the Android interface, and I'll admit that it looks pretty neat. It doesn't appear windowed, actually, and seems to have lots of pretty icons. Not quite as pretty as the iPhone, but much better than I'd imagined.

Hopefully if the platform is truly open, one can skin the interface, change icons, etc.

It will be interesting to see what dev tools emerge for this.  I just have dabbled a bit in writing Firefox extensions, and writing little applets to run on Android may be fun.

From Android Guys - an aggregation of all the rumored specs on the G1:

• 528Mhz Qualcomm 7201 processor
• Data kit for USB connectivity in the box
• 64MB Internal RAM
• 128MB Internal ROM
• 1GB MicroSD card
• 5 Row QWERTY keypad
• Trackball
• Dedicated camera button
• 3.1MP camera (no flash) 2048 x 1536
• Video playback files - H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and Codec 3GP
• Dedicated YouTube Player
• Audio playback files - MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, REAL AUDIO, OGG
• Wallpaper supports JPG, BMP, PNG, and GIF
• Speakerphone (mono, natch)
• Ringtones (MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA)
• HTTP, WAP Push, xHTML
• Bluetooth (class 1)
• Picture Caller ID
• SMS and MMS support (Take that Apple!)
• POP, IMAP, and SMTP, AOL, and GMAIL email
• AIM, MSN, YAHOO, and GTALK messaging
• Quad Band (850, 900, 1800, 1900)
• 3G
• 802.11b & 802.11g
  
• UMTS (1,4), HSDPA, SUPL
  
• 1150mAh battery
• Screen size is 3.17″ with HVGA (480  x 320)
• Handset 117 x 55 x 16mm
• 5.6 oz weight
  
• Sync capable with Google Calendar
• Downloadable content via Android Marketplace
• Google Streetview with built-in compass