T-Mobile sold out its first 1.5 million pre-orders of HTC's G1 phone, the first handset based on the Google Android Java/Linux stack, says The Motley Fool. The wireless carrier also plans to have several million handsets available for the Oct. 22 retail launch, says the story.

(Click for larger view of the G1's landscape-mode desktop)

As pre-orders escalated, T-Mobile quickly tripled its shipment of approximately a half a million handsets, but the additional million G1s were sold out as well, says the story by Anders Bylund. By comparison, the story notes that at Apple's iPhone 3G launch, the company expected it would sell 10 million of the phones this year. Still, the high interest in G1 represents “a heck of a rush for an unproven software concept on never-before-seen hardware,” writes Bylund.

G1's Google desktop search bar, search results, and message view screens
(Click any to enlarge)
As reported at the G1 launch in late September, the T-Mobile G1 runs Linux and Android on an unidentified processor. It offers 1GB of flash, a 3.2-inch touchscreen haptic display, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. T-Mobile says it has 100 million customers in Europe, but only about 30 million in the U.S.

Availability

The T-Mobile G1 is available now for pre-order for T-Mobile customers, and will ship in the U.S. on Oct. 22 for $180 with a two-year voice and data agreement, says T-Mobile. The G1 will then ship in the UK in November, and in the rest of Europe in the first quarter of 2009. More information may be found here. The Motley Fool story should be found here.

---

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.