The first handset sporting the highly anticipated Google designed Android platform has been officially announced. The HTC G1 is scheduled to be hitting the market on October 22nd and preorders with T-Mobile for the device will be starting soon.

This has been a long time coming, especially for this blogger, and it’s finally nice to see that Google is about to put itself in the race. The G1 is going to be functional with a number of Google online services. Gmail will be available with push support, Google talk and YouTube as well. AmazonMP3 will also be directly accessible from the phone (although the lack of a 3.5 mm headjack will make music listening a bit frustrating).

One of the coolest features however is the embedded digital compass that syncs with Maps Street View and google maps to give you live 360 degree city scape browsing. So you can walk a city without even walking a city. Apparently integrated games with this GPS function are on the way. Counterstrike in your home town maybe?

In terms of hardware the G1 isn’t the fanciest phone, but it does hold its own. It features a 3.2-inch display touchscreen display, QWERTY keyboard and a 3.15 MP camera. The memory specs are 92 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM and a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 Mhz processor which should work splendidly with the Android OS.

Even though the hardware leaves something to be desired the real reason we’re all going to be after this phone is the Android OS. Video demos of the OS are spilling out onto the web and the functionality looks fantastic.

Look at the video below for yourself: