SlashGear

You’ve seen the photos, now for the hands-on video!  We spent some serious time with T-Mobile’s G1 smartphone yesterday, the first production device based on Google’s Android platform, and shot footage of everything we thought SlashGear readers would be interested in.  After the cut you’ll find clips of the Android Market download store in action, Google Street View with the intuitive compass navigation, and Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 music store, which will be pre-installed on every G1.

Check out the G1 demo videos after the cut

The G1 is the product of collaboration between HTC, Google and T-Mobile, and is apparently the culmination of three years of development.  The long, narrow (and, it has to be said, pretty thick) body hides not only a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with support for gestures, but a full QWERTY keyboard with dedicated search button, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and dualband UMTS HSPA for high-speed 3G downloads.

Pre-sales for the T-Mobile G1 are already underway, with the handset costing from $179 (though some have been asked to pay as much as $299).  Two data plans are on offer – on top of a regular voice plan – priced at $25 for unlimited data and a set amount of bundled messages, and $35 for unlimited data and messages.  Rather ominously, T-Mobile have set a data cap at 1GB, after which they reserve the right to throttle down your connection speed; considering the G1 is meant to be a mobile internet device, this seems a strange arrangement.

There’s masses more information and discussion of the T-Mobile G1 over at our sibling site Android Community.

T-Mobile G1 Hands-On:

T-Mobile G1 Street View:

Android Market demo:

Amazon MP3 Download Store demo:

G1 YouTube & Media Player:

T-Mobile G1 Settings walkthrough: