I was one of the folks to pre-order the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. The G1 launched today and is available at T-Mobile locations. I pre-ordered mine (and one for my wife) and received it yesterday afternoon. I've had several requests for a review, so I'll post a few initial thoughts here.

First, I love the phone. Early reviews called it brickish, ugly, and all sorts of horrible names. I find it to be none of those things. In fact, the phone is smaller then I was expecting.

Getting the phone setup was VERY EASY. On first boot, you enter your Google account information, or set up an account if you don't already have one. Within a minute or so, my contacts were downloaded from Gmail, I had a mail alert, and my calendar was available.

I bought a black phone, and my wife the bronze color so we could tell them apart. The bronze color is much nicer then I expected, but the lighter keyboard on the bronze model was slightly harder to read. The keys on the black model were very easy.

I'm not in a T-Mobile 3G area, and I knew that when I ordered the phone. I find the EDGE speeds to be just fine for most uses of the phone. I was able to listen to a podcast within seconds of starting the download, and I find most apps to be responsive when sending and receiving data. The mail app is particularly nice, as it caches data locally and handles sending email in the background.

The capacitive screen is flush mounted, like the iPhone. It's a little smaller then the iPhone screen, but the same resolution. It doesn't feel cramped, and the color is great.

The selection of apps in the Android Marketplace is a little thin at the moment, but user submission will open on Monday. There will also be an Over The Air firmware update in the next day or so, which contains minor updates and fixes.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later, but I wanted to mention these few things that I hadn't found on other websites and reviews.