Google made big waves when it announced that it intended to enter into the mobile phone operating system world. Google’s Android operating system was very much anticipated and finally launched not too long ago on the T-Mobile G1.

The catch for many who might have been interested in the G1 was that the device is a T-Mobile exclusive. A company called Global Unlock has announced that it is offering unlock codes for the G1 that will allow the device to operate on any GSM network around the world.

DigiTimes is now reporting that Asus is planning to launch an Android-based handset, which confirms some rumors we’ve heard. They were invited to join the Open Handset Alliance after all. The phone will apparently be available sometime in the first half of 2009, and might land in Taiwan first under ASUS’ own brand before coming our way in the form of different customized models. As you might expect, no other details at this point, but sources say that ASUS will be phasing out its use of the Ericsson Mobile Platform for handset platforms from Qualcomm and Marvell.

In a surprising move, Facebook won’t be creating an application to run on T-Mobile’s G1 Android-powered smartphone, even though it is available for the iPhone and BlackBerry. Considering this, Facebook fans who are in the market for a new phone will probably pass on the G1.

Facebook commented that Google or another third party will have to develop the application for them, as they don’t want to dedicate any resources toward developing an app for Android. If you want to take a paranoid look at the situation, consider this. Facebook is ad-served and invested in by Microsoft. Make of that what you will, but just because your paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to deny you a phone app.

While people love the G1 and it has an excellent keyboard…and it’s only been available for about a day, many users are already complaining that they cannot type in landscape mode.

Never fear, according to the Android development roadmap, we’ll be getting a touchscreen keyboard in Q1 2009 that features “a dictionary of suggestions and a suggestion algorithm.” So it will basically work like the iPhone keyboard. Great news as many find it annoying, having to slide open the G1 every time they want to enter some data.

Unless you live under a rock in the ocean between Patrick and SpongeBob, you have heard something about the G1 smartphone. The G1 is the first Google Android device to hit the market and compete against the iPhone and the other smartphone players.

T-Mobile announced today that the G1 can now be purchased. According to T-Mobile, you can walk into any T-Mobile store and walk out with the G1 ready to go. the handset can also be purchased on the T-Mobile website. In some 3G T-Mobile areas the G1 can also be purchased at select third party retailers.

According to some recently discovered fine print in the Android Market terms of service, it appears Apple is not the only one implementing a remote kill switch for applications on their phone. In this case however Google has openly stated that they may “discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement”, and in such cases they reserve the right to “…remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion”.

This all comes after somewhat of an uproar when a developer happened upon a feature that allows Apple to remotely remove applications from the iPhone. This type of remote kill feature is meant to help with security and privacy in the event that some malicious application finds its way onto your mobile device, but many find it a little intrusive since it certainly does not give you free reign to run whatever applications you would like on your Google phone with Android.

Smartphones are a relatively small percentage of all mobile phones on the market today. Despite the small percentage of smartphones, the devices are still where many manufacturers throw their coolest tech and hardest marketing push. T-Mobile has announced a smartphone that many have been waiting for.

The T-Mobile G1 is the first smartphone to be announced running the Google Android operating system. Android is open source and allows for lots of customization. The G1 offers 3G broadband and EDGE network connectivity, Wi-Fi, GPS and more. A slide out QWERTY keyboard complements the touch screen.

There have been lots of rumors about the highly anticipated Android-powered, HTC Dream phone. Now it’s official. T-Mobile confirmed today that it plans to launch an Android mobile phone made by HTC. They are hoping to make it a direct threat to Apple’s popular iPhone.

A spokesman for Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company gave no details on the launch date, but according to the New York Times, the phone will hit stores in the United States before Christmas. Maybe even as early as October. Apparently the device will have a touch screen and will slide out to reveal a full five-row keyboard.

Sometimes the coolest gadgets in Sci-Fi are not gadgets at all. But robots. Here’s a look at some of the most memorable robots from sci-fi in no particular order. It’s not a complete list. Think of it more as a walk down memory lane. Because geeks love Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi has a long history of loving robots.

Kokoro Dreams has a new Android. You might notice that this one has a disturbing resemblance to Harry Potter. It’s name is Phorone. The lifesized android stands at 175 cms tall and is from an anime show that aired on the Nippon network, where her character is a secretary who plays the role of a protagonist.

The idea is that she could potentially replace your secretary. She is apparently powered by pressurized air and is capable of delivering human like expressions and can even talk. There are no plans of putting up the Phorone for rent. Check out a video below.

Take a look at these images of an Alienware mobile phone that would be built on the Android platform. it possesses has the familiar look of the Alienware computers with a glowing grill when calls come in and a a slide-up display to reveal a touch-sensitive keypad and a joystick for mobile gaming right in the middle. We can’t disagree that this phone might be the most popular design with hardcore gamers and Star Trek fans, but probably not the biggest hit on the market. Of course we’re eager to see any phone running Android and this one is no exception, but these look to be just designs for now.

In case you’re keeping track of that latest open source development platform for mobile devices called Android , the team just released an updated version based on all the great feedback they’ve received from the early releases of the platform. This latest release got the snappy name of m5-rc14, which I guess seems fitting for a platform named Android.

This version has a UI that is still a work in progress but received a significant update. Also new is the addition of layout animations, new media codecs to support 6 new audio file formats, an improvements to the Eclipse plugin and classes for geo-coding that will let you go both ways, (address to coordinate and coordinate to address for you pervs).

This morning Google had a phone open phone conference and made the much anticipated announcement that they along with 33 other companies are starting the Open Handset Alliance. The first and main project of the newly formed alliance is called Android, an open development platform for mobile handsets. The ultimate goal for Google with this is to overall make a better, more usable phone with more features where consumers will benefit, and of course to show advertisements on it where Google will also benefit.

Eric Schmidt was present on the call leading things off, with a number of other captains of industry including Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm, Peter Chou from HTC and Ed Zander from Motorola. The members of the Open Handset Alliance include some big names like Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, eBay, Intel, NVIDIA and many others. Some notable big names we’re not seeing on the member list are Microsoft, Apple, AT&T and Verizon.