After a lot of talk and speculation Google have finally announced the launch of the T-Mobile G1 in New York, which will try to rival the iPhone. It is yet to be seen which handset will triumph with the run up to Christmas, but which handset is better on paper.

The Weigh in!... In my opinion, the iPhone is one of the best looking phones on the market and the HTC G1 doesn't quite compare with the sleekness of the iPhone design. The iPhone weighs in at133g and the G1 weighs in a little heavier at 158g. The iphone a little wider but not as long as the G1 with the iPhone measuring 115.5mm by 62.1mm and the G1 measuring 117mm by 55.7mm. They are not too dissimilar in size but the real differences lay in the screen and its display. The G1 has a display screen of 320 x 480 pixels, 3.2 inches that displays at 65K colours, where as the iPhone boasts a 3.5 inch display at 16 million colours which is fab for when you are watching Finding Nemo on the train to work.

The camera is where the iPhone falls short. It is a 2mp camera that shoots at 1600*1200 pixels, where as the G1 has a 3.15mp camera that shoots at 2048x1536 pixels.

The G1 has a memory card slot which means that the sky is the limit for the amount of "stuff" that you want to store on it. The iPhone has either an 8gig or a 16gig version of the handset. This may be a problem for all of those music and films buffs out there who need a little more than this.

The iPhone comes in either white or black and you have a choice of white, brown or black with the G1 (The white is probably the nicest of the three).

The G1 will be available on T-Mobile within the coming months, but our verdict is that it probably will not be as popular as the iPhone 3G which hit 3 million sales in its first month of release.

In terms of performance the G1 is pretty smart. And it allows for developers to be able to make applications for it that will be available for everyone. This is different to what Apple has in place as they have to approve any applications that are available for the iPhone through iTunes. I guess you could say that this is to protect us from harmful software, but it means that there is a limit to what is available.

In terms of a mobile internet device the G1 has a better performance than the iPhone as it supports more internet software. The platform, known as Android, was developed by Google who ultimately want users to search the web using the handset (as that is how they make their money), so you can only assume that it does this well. A few weeks ago, apple were made to remove an advert that they were showing on television that claimed the iphone could access 'all of the internet'. This we know not to be true as it does not support a feature called flash that we see in many websites.

An Asian company called HTC developed the handset that you see, but word on the street is that Samsung and LG are also going to be developing handsets that support the Google made Android software. It may be that you do not like the look of this phone, but the chances are you will be seeing the software in a lot of places in the future.

All in all we here much prefer the look of the iPhone to the HTC G1 but in terms of performance the G1 looks a winner. It will be interesting to see how Google take to producing mobile software and technology and if it helps to make mobile internet more popular... Now, if only somebody could look to develop a nice looking phone for it to run on.