One little touch that I like is that the G1 uses tactile (haptic) feedback to good effect. For example, when you tap and hold an icon to move it, the phone vibrates ever so slightly to tell you that you're in move mode--it's the equivalent of the dancing icons the iPhone's home screen, but subtler and no less effective.

I also like Android's notifications bar. We're used to the idea of a status bar showing you the time, cell phone signal strength, Wi-Fi status, and so on, but Android also uses status bar icons to show other notifications such as unread emails, missed phone calls, text messages, and more. Of course, there's not a lot of real estate to display detailed information, but all you have to do is tap on the status bar and drag it down; it slides open like a window shade, yielding a more detailed list of all your notifications. Tap on any of them to be taken to the appropriate application.

Unlike the iPhone, the G1's ability to switch between portrait and landscape views is not dependent on the orientation of the phone (though the G1 does also have an accelerometer); instead, it depends mostly on whether the keyboard is open or closed. Some applications do switch automatically into landscape mode, such as the Photos application, and some let you switch via the software, such as the Web browser. More annoying is the lack of an onscreen keyboard (one is supposedly coming in future update), which means that you can't enter text in portrait mode. At all. Of course, Android still lets you focus on a text field in portrait mode, but you'll have to flip the phone and open the keyboard in order to actually type. 

One major feature that Android has and the iPhone OS lacks is support for running multiple applications at a time. This means that you can be chatting with your friends over IM while surfing the web and checking your email, all at the same time. Capability-wise, that's not only handy, but a feature that many computer users are used to. Still, it might take you a while to realize that you can actually jump back and forth between recent apps without going back to the Home screen, since the only way to switch directly between applications is to hold down the Home button for a few seconds; you'll then be presented with a panel containing the six most recent apps.

You can also retrace your steps using the hardware "Back" key, but the functionality of that key is, if not exactly unpredictable, at least confusing. You see, he "Back" key always goes back--unfortunately, sometimes that means going back to a previous Web page, sometimes it means going hierarchically "up" (in the Settings application, for example), and sometimes it means going back to the last application that you were in. In many instances, I found it jarring as I switched between applications with no warning, especially as there is no corresponding "forward" key to take you back to where you were before you hit the "Back" button. My general uncertainty about where I'd go when I hit the Back button meant that I frequently shied away from using it.