Despite the long list of new features in 1.5, the core of the OS is still more-or-less the same. Accordingly, most Android Market content is completely compatible, and those in the first wave to try the G1 builds were able to log in and download to their hearts' content. At some point in the last few days, though, it seems that Google has started cracking down—Google-sourced builds can no longer access the store, though HTC-sourced builds still seem to work fine.

The trick is to nab one of the "H"-suffixed versions, which'll give you all the perks without any of the sacrifice. —Note: Unlike previous "Cupcake" builds, this one includes Google Apps, the Android Market and the full battery of standard features that you can expect to see on a production HTC Sapphire, for example. It's not just the stripped-down OS. [haykuro via BGR]

What this means is that means that listed apps can be defined as carrier specific, by Google. A tethering app that violates T-Mobile's ToS will be either invisible or inaccessible to US users, while available to someone on a tethering-friendly network elsewhere. This has the effect of creating carrier-specific App Markets, and an uneven Android experience from company to company.

Of course, you can still install whatever apps you want if you're willing to get your hands a little dirty, but removing a category of app from the Marketplace will make it effectively off limits for most. [Android Community]

Unlike Samsung, with their similar "at least three" announcement a few months back, HTC has a track record here, but considering how short their Android line is now a redundant Magic/G1-esque handset seems unlikely. The most obvious new direction to take would be a BlackBerry-esque QWERTY phone, something that the OS is more or less ready to handle, and that desperately needs to be explored.

HTC hasn't dropped any real hints as to what these new phones will be, but the two month announcement-to-shipment precedent they've set with the G1 and G2, the number of promised handsets and this self-imposed nine month deadline means that we might find out sooner rather than later. The biggest question, of course: Will there be chins?[PCWorld]

We’ve been notified of this issue (Jailbreaking of Android) and have developed a fix. We’re currently working with our partners to push the fix out and updating the open source code base to reflect these changes.

So what do Android users stand to lose from this Apple-like vigilance?

At present, very little. The so-called 'jailbreak' was of a completely different nature than the app-enabling hack that iPhone users are now so accustomed to. The technique was a telnet trick that allowed for easy root access to the operating system, so the reality of the situation is less like a 'jailbreak' in the iPhone sense, and more like finding the administrative password on a desktop Linux system.

The exploit did provide more access to the the Android's core functions, some of which could be useful for app development and porting to other phones, but it also exposed a gaping vulnerability that would be immediately shut on any other Linux distribution. Google's patch is most accurately characterized as a security fix, not a party poop. [ModMyGphone, XDA —Thanks, Kyle]

Sad news, US. we looked into it- by the time we could bring Touch HD to the States, it would be old news. We do have other cool stuff coming.

The G1 is admittedly more exciting, but this thing is set to be one of the best Windows Mobile phones available. Import options will be available sans 3G support, which nobody will want anyway. [Twitter via WMExperts]

Right now, the anything-goes Android Market only supports free apps, but that should change right around the G1's launch, at least if Google is serious about having premiere apps populate the store from the start, like high end games. There's a lot of fantastic freeness to be had—like out of the Android Developer Challenge or as Apple's App Store shows—but some developers want some hard coin for their code, and not just evil corporations like EA.

On the other hand, EA has experience with digital distribution and you can sideload apps without going through the Android Market, so why don't they sell them straight through EA's site? [Pocket Gamer via Crave]

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T-Mobile branded phones operating on the T-Mobile network may only use T-Mobile SIM cards. To use a T-Mobile branded phone on another wireless carrier's network with a non-T-Mobile SIM card, you must first request a "SIM Unlock" code from T-Mobile. Conversely, if you have a phone from another North American wireless carrier, you may need to request a "SIM Unlock" code from that carrier before being able to use a T-Mobile SIM card on the T-Mobile network.

* SIM Unlock Codes will only be provided after your account has been active for 90 days. Only one unlock code may be provided per customer every 90 days.

Yes, even if you pay $399 for a contract-less phone, you've still gotta have an active account for 90 days to have T-Mobile unlock it.

Of course, as we noted before, if you're just interested in unlocking the G1 you really won't have to worry about this at all: Developers can (and probably will, we're betting within a couple of days after the launch) totally put an unlocking application in the Android Market—it won't be blocked or pulled down. Definitely a prudent and laudable move on T-Mobile's part, since trying to fight hackers on a phone almost explicitly designed for it would be retardo to the tenth degree. See, it really is up to devs to make Android awesome. [T-Mobile G1 Coverage @ Giz]

Update: T-Mobile also has a live webcast of the event going up soon, but who knows how many concurrent connections that will hold. Hopefully it stays up, our liveblog definitely will.

SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Sept. 23, 2008—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that the Amazon MP3 music store will be pre-loaded on the T-Mobile G1, the world's first Android(TM)-powered mobile phone in partnership with Google. T-Mobile G1 users can search, download, buy and play music from Amazon MP3, which offers over 6 million DRM-free MP3 songs from all four major music labels and thousands of independent labels that can be played on virtually any hardware device and managed with any music software.

"Amazon wants to make it easy for customers to discover, buy, and play their music wherever they happen to be—whether sitting at their computer or on the go," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music and Video. "We look forward to the release of the T-Mobile G1, which will put Amazon MP3's vast selection of low-priced DRM-free music at the fingertips of even more customers in more places."

The T-Mobile G1 comes pre-loaded with an Amazon MP3 application, giving customers a phone-optimized version of the Amazon MP3 store and the immediate gratification of buying and playing their favorite music. Amazon MP3 has worked to make its DRM-free music available through numerous products and services, such as Pandora MySpace Music, and now Android and T-Mobile G1.

Downloading music from Amazon MP3 using the T-Mobile G1 requires a Wi-Fi connection but searching, browsing, listening to samples and buying MP3s can be done wherever customers are connected to the T-Mobile network. Downloaded MP3s can be played anytime on the T-Mobile G1, PCs, Macs or any other MP3 music player.

Launched in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers a massive selection of DRM-free MP3 music downloads with more than 6 million songs from thousands of record labels. Every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software, enabling customers to play their music on virtually any personal digital music-capable device, including PCs, Macs(R), iPods(R), iPhones(R), Zunes(TM), Zens(TM), and to burn songs to CDs for these customers' personal use. Amazon MP3's 100 bestselling songs are 89 cents, unless otherwise marked, with over 1 million songs available at 89 cents. Amazon MP3's 100 bestselling albums are $8.99 or less, unless otherwise marked. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99, with more than 80 percent of Amazon MP3's album catalog priced at $8.99 or below.

The T-Mobile G1 is the world's first Android-powered mobile phone in an exclusive partnership with Google. The T-Mobile G1 combines full touch-screen functionality and a QWERTY keyboard with a mobile Web experience that includes the popular Google services that millions have enjoyed on the desktop, including Google Maps with StreetView, Gmail, YouTube and others. With a fun and intuitive user interface and one-touch access to Google Search, the T-Mobile G1 is also the first phone to provide access to Android Market, where customers can find and download unique applications to expand and personalize their phone to fit their lifestyle.

Android is an open, free mobile platform developed by the Open Handset Alliance. It includes everything a manufacturer or operator needs to build a mobile phone. Android was designed from the ground up to enable the best user experience possible on a mobile phone. It leverages web and Internet content to provide advanced services such as Mobile Mash-ups.

Songs and albums on Amazon MP3 are generally sold by Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

[Amazon]

• One-click Google search and easy access to all Google Applications - Quick and easy access to the Internet in one click.
• One touch access to Google applications:
Maps (including satellite, traffic and street views)
Gmail
YouTube
Calendar
Google Talk

• Size: 4.6 x 2.16 x 0.63 inches
• Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Display: 65K color screen, HVGA (480×320) 4.6 inches
• Talk Time: 5 hours
• Standby Time: 130 hours

• Expandable up to 8 GB memory

• No stereo bluetooth

• Gmail account required to sign in and use, no corporate access email available

• Required data plan associated with this device; it will not work without the data plan active
• No prepay.

• GPS is confirmed.
• No video capture.
• 3.1 mp camera.

Time will tell exactly how accurate these "confirmed" facts are. Over to you in the comments, chaps: does that make you want the phone more or less? It certainly seems a tempting prospect to me. [TmoNews]

1. It's open! The single best thing about Android is that's a modern mobile phone OS that's also almost completely open, unlike some other locked down mobile OSes. (There are a few restrictions in accessing the hardware for security reasons.) It's based on Linux, and once Google has released Android, most of it will be totally open source, so it'll be incredibly easy to dive into its guts and mess around, which will help build a robust developer community, along with all of the other benefits of using open software. Most of its other awesome traits grow out of its openness, actually.

2. We'll keep the Steve references to a minimum here, but Android will accelerate the process that the iPhone helped kickstart last year—the gradual devolution of carriers to open, dumb pipes. Before, carriers controlled every single facet of what a phone could and could not do. They still do to an extent, and it's not completely "anything goes" on the iPhone and Android, but together they have and will make the mobile landscape change far more rapidly than before. As Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner told me a few days ago, just a few years ago, carriers thought that the idea of full internet access was ridiculous, not to mention dangerous, threatening the obscenely lucrative business they have set up around minuscule bits of data like text messages, crappy "web portals" and ringtones. Android phones will be constantly connected and totally revolve around the internet, incessantly sucking down ever cheaper data—a carrier's worst nightmare not so long ago.

3. You'll have tons of hardware options. Android's designed to be versatile, so lots of manufacturers will be putting it on lots of phones—ones with QWERTY keyboards, touchscreens, T9, outrageously spec'd out phones, as well as ones that are kinda crappy in the spec department, actually. But this also provides a common platform for developers, making it easy to put their apps on millions of phones. It's the benefit of any OS that runs on a lot of hardware—like Windows or Linux, etc. Of course, this is also the Windows Mobile argument against all of the other proprietary OSes like Palm and BlackBerry.

4. There's even more potential for amazing apps than the iPhone, because developers are almost completely unencumbered by arbitrary rules and restrictions. So awesome apps like Podcaster or Instictiv Shuffle won't be mercilessly killed for not fitting into a tightly controlled framework or navigating a byzantine approval process.

5. It'll have the best Google apps experience of any mobile device, and play super nicely with Gmail, Gcal, Maps and everything else Google puts out. Or at least it damn well better, since you know, it's Google's baby. Simple, direct syncing with Gcal is tops in our list, since doing it on the iPhone requires sacrificing a goat while chanting from a book covered in the skin of baby unicorns.

Bonus reason: Not an iPhone. And our software geek sister Lifehacker has some more too.

1. Google can see into your soul. If you've ever been wary about how much Google knows about you, how are you going to feel when they're all over your cellphone? While a lot of the reason Android came to be was just to get people really using the internet on their phone (because when people use the internet, they use Google), we won't be surprised to see contextualized local ads, kind of like the sidebar ones you see offering you a date from hot local girls in Brooklyn or whatever hovel you're holed up in. But this will be hot girls just around the corner, since the phone will know where you're at.

2. It's not on the US's two biggest carriers, AT&T or Verizon. Statistically speaking, you've got one of them. But so far only the two runts of the majors, Sprint and T-Mobile are going to have Android phones. T-Mobile's 3G network is pathetically tiny compared to the other three, and well, Sprint's the only carrier actively losing subscribers, if that tells you anything. It's possible we'll see some Android action on Verizon's mythical open network though.

3. Buuut, carriers still have the right to gimp Android to their liking, precisely because of its Apache licensing. So a Sprint Android phone could have its built-in "store" stocked only with, say, Yahoo! apps—or no store at all. In Verizon's hands, the UI could still look like it fell in a bucket of gaudy red paint.

4. Android is designed to run on a ton of different of hardware—phones with and without touchscreens, with and without QWERTY keyboards, phones with amazing specs, crappy phones, and everything in between. While this is a strong point as mentioned above, it could also be a point of suckiness. That means there won't be a consistent Android experience, and it'll depend heavily on the device you're using. Devs told us that you'll likely see different versions of their apps, so that on weakass phones, you'll have more diluted apps, which might be an issue for people picking up a cheap Android phone expecting to do everything a more expensive one will.

5. Relying too much on developers to fill in features could result in a phone that's not quite totally seamless and consumer-grade across the board. For instance, from what we've seen in the SDK, there's not a built-in, Google-made media player. It's rumored that the excellent TuneWiki will be Android's default player, which is great, but doing this for too many key features could make things a bit bumpy, since you're talking several developers instead of just one.

Bonus reason: It's not an iPhone.