Jason Chen, android-Developer-Advocate at Google, just blogged the good news: One day before the first T-Mobile-G1 android-smartphones ship in the US, the Open Handset Alliance released the sourcecode of the android operating system as open source. Quite logical and necessary step … but don’t under estimate this: This step may change the mobile industry like LINUX changed the computer industry.

Joshua from Engadget.com just published a first review of the Google-Phone T-Mobile G1 just before the official roll-out of the Android-cellphone in the US. He tested the hard- and software - so this is a must for all those of you, who want to know more about the new phone! Thanks Josuha!

A black day for Microsoft and Windows Mobile … the Open Mobile Alliance did a great job in launching T-Mobile G1. For 3 years T-Mobile, Google and HTC worked on bringing the first handest of the Open Mobile Alliance to the market.

The features:

• Touchscreen
• Full slide out keyboard
• Multithreading
• Compass-Mode
• Android Market for new applications
• No out-of-the-box desktop-syncing … but the developer community will close that gap soon
• WiFi, 3G (UMTS dual band), GSM (quad band) - with GPRS/EDGE
• 3 Megapixel camera
• Bluetooth
• GoogleTalk presence service implemented in the phone book
• SIM-locked to T-Mobile

Available in the US: October 26th 2008 - $179 for the G1 with a T-Mobile voice plan plus a data plan. Data plan with unlimited data and 400 messages for 25$ option or an unlimited data and messaging plan for 35$.

UK: Early November 2008 and rest of Europe in the first quarter of 2009.

This add’s a lot of competition to the mobile handset market where Apple speeded up the innovation circle with the iPhone. So, let’s get ready to rumble!

Source/Video: Pressconference T-Mobile, New York Sep. 22, 2008, Picture: T-Mobile

Today at 10:30 ETC (16:30 MEZ) we’ll be enlightened: At that time the T-Mobile press conference begins in New York. The first Android mobile phone should be announced there. Even here at the Google Developer Day in Munich there is nothing specific new and interesting about the Android roadmap - the only news: wait until 16:30

The Announcement of T-Mobile is one of the first fire tests of the young mobile platform, which received early praise for it’s Open-Source approach. Now, we’ll see whether a revolution is possible in the closed-source-loving mobile industry … because the best mobile platform is worth nothing, if there aren’t any handsets and mobile data rates that make sense!

Pratik Naik from the Rails core team just published the announcement for a new Ruby on Rails hackfest: The person with the most patches merged into the core at the end of the month wins. In August, O’Reilly will handout a free pass to the RailsConf Europe. Keep on coding!