Now that analysts are getting their hands on the T-Mobile G1, talk is beginning about what the first Android-powered phone doesn’t offer. T-Mobile launched the HTC-made device Tuesday, complete with full touchscreen functionality and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for a mobile Web experience largely driven by Google products, including Search, Google Street View, Gmail and YouTube.

The phone is making the intended splash. In fact, Neil Mawston, director of Wireless Device Strategies at Strategy Analytics, is forecasting a major Android impact on the 10.5 million smartphones to be sold in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2008.

“We estimate smartphones with Google’s Android operating system, led by HTC of Taiwan, will reach 0.4 million units in the quarter, for a four percent market share,” Mawston said. “Android is a relatively late entrant and it will join an increasingly crowded market alongside Blackberry, Microsoft, Apple, Palm, Symbian and LiMo.”

Limited Synchronizing

The T-Mobile

G1 synchronizes e-mail, calendar and contacts from Gmail as well as most other POP3 or IMAP e-mail services. The device multitasks, so you can read a Web page while additionally downloading e-mail in the background. And it combines Instant Messaging support for Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. But there is no connection to the desktop.

“If I have my contacts in Outlook or my Calendar in iCal, I have no easy way of synchronizing that subject matter onto my device without figuring out some way of getting it up to a Google service,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia. “That’s fine whether I am a Google user. whether I am not a Google user, thereupon I have to sign up for that service, and I have to figure out how to export and maintain my substance. In some cases it…

Original post by dhiram