When the T-Mobile G1 debuted last fall, many positioned it as the first serious competitor to the iPhone. Backed by a trio of experienced companies--wireless carrier T-Mobile, handset manufacturer HTC, and Google--it boasted a pedigree that immediately gave it widespread press coverage and high expectations. But now that the dust has cleared, how does the device really stack up? While this review is showing up after the G1's been on the market for a few months, it hopefully makes up for in thoroughness what it lacks in timeliness.

Certainly, the G1 is an impressive debut for Google's Android platform, but there's no question to my mind that it's aimed at a different audience than Apple's iPhone: namely, those who value sheer raw can-do power over the nuance of good design. Had the G1 been released around the same time as the original iPhone, I think the phrase that would have summed it up would have been "does more, but not as well." As it is today, the G1 and iPhone overlap in around 90 percent of their feature sets, so unless you're in search of one particular capability, the decision over which to buy is going to come down to the details.

Perhaps it's not fair to stack the two phones up against each other, but it's become unavoidable in the context of the smart phone market. More to the point, as this is Macworld, I'd imagine that many readers are in fact interested in what the two devices have in common, as well as where they differ.

The electric slide

The G1 handset is only the first piece of hardware to run the Android OS and, while they are ostensibly one product, we know that there are plenty of different Android-capable devices in the offing, so the two parts are separate in a way that isn't true of the iPhone, which shares its software with the increasingly similar iPod touch.