The launch arrives the day before the first handset goes to market in the US, the T-Mobile G1.  The G1 should be available in the UK in early November.

The marketing campaign is reported to be the biggest T-Mobile have ever lauched and it needs to be to take on O2 and the Apple Iphone.

From early reports, the G1 is no Iphone, but it’s getting there, and with the huge amount of potential development from the worldwide open-source community, supported by the Open Handset Alliance, it’s got huge potential.

Android uses a Linux Kernel, in the same way that Mac OS X sits on a Linux base on the iphone.  Whilst Linux was never expressly designed for mobile use, it’s ideal for a multi purpose computing environment which allows a far less restricted range of applications.  The reason for this is that it runs on x86 (esq) hardware as opposed to a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) based device (like an older phone or a dvd player).

The first release of the code is a big step.  It’s reported to be the largest repository of open source code that has been released at any one time, and with such a wealth of different factors that it will need to encounter now and in the future: different carriers, languages, devices with their own graphical subsystems and multimedia.  It’s got a big job ahead of it!  

Watch this space for more information as we find it, but it’s looking like a big week for Android!