Innovations for tech-heads but it lacks the wow factor

Anyone picking up a G1 when it comes to the UK in November will immediately compare it with the iPhone. Firstly, the G1 looks more like a phone - it has the traditional red and green call buttons, plus helpful back and "home" buttons if you make a mistake. It also has a track ball like a Blackberry which can be used as a mouse for anyone who finds touchscreens too confusing.

The biggest difference, however, is the full qwerty keypad that appears when the screen is slid to one side. The buttons look tiny but are remarkably responsive and generate fewer mistakes than the iPhone's virtual keypad. But the G1 is heavier and bulkier than the Apple device and, frankly, just not as physically attractive.

The technology is at least as good if not in some cases better - the G1 is certainly faster at downloading from the internet and its camera is better - but it lacks the wow factor of the Apple device. The G1's touchscreen is as responsive as the iPhone's and the G1 has some clever innovations such as press and hold, to drag icons and photos around the device and a useful magnifying glass that can be dragged across web pages to raise the size of individual portions of the screen. But the ability to enlarge pages by just pressing two fingers on the screen and moving them apart as you can on an iPhone is, for want of a better word, cooler.

Users can make calls, send emails and texts, chat on instant messenger, surf the web, use contacts and calendars. It has a music player which will take MP3 files as well as tracks from iTunes. When it launches in the UK the phone will boast a removable 2GB memory card, which should be able to store several hundred songs.

The real difference between the two devices, however, is likely to come from the openness of Google's operating system, Android, which allows tech-heads to design "widgets" for the phone. There is a button on the G1 that takes the user to an application marketplace where they can download anything, from a virtual compass to a barcode reader that uses the phone's camera to read barcodes and then connects to the internet to find the cheapest price for them.

As the name shows, the G1 is the first phone that uses Android and it is a very good effort. But for the time being the iPhone still seems to have the advantage.