A few weeks ago, Google and T-Mobile rolled out the G1, the first mobile phone to run the open-source Android operating system. As the Android platform and Android Marketplace develop, it will be interesting to see how they compare to the iPhone platform and the App Store. Will the openness provide the benefits the Open Handset Alliance is claiming? And what will the security costs be?

Android developers can already post apps in the new Android Marketplace without going through an iPhone-like certification process—they just register (for a $25 fee), describe the app, and upload it. As with the iPhone App Store, the developer will get a 70% cut. (So far the Android Marketplace is only set up for free applications, but that should change at the end of the year.)

Developers can also distribute apps independently, through sites like Handago or SlideMe, or through individual websites. The developer would then keep the entire fee, but will have to find the audience. We’ll see whether a 30% cut is seen as a fair trade for visibility.

James Johnson at Bright Hub has a helpful explanation of how the Marketplace works. When users click on an app they’re thinking of buying from the Marketplace, they’ll be taken to a list of user comments and ratings, so they can get the collective wisdom about how good the app is.

If the user decides to buy it, she clicks “install,” reads a screen that tells her which of the phone’s capabilities the app can access, and then okays the purchase. Android users, unlike iPhone users, can download an app for a 24-hour trial period, then return it if they don’t like it. It’s not clear how the return will work. Possibly they’ll use technology similar to the kill switch to take the application off the phone, or maybe the user will voluntarily remove the application before receiving a refund.

A couple of examples of currently-available apps for the G1 phone:

The pleasingly simple Android-optimized version of Wikipedia:

Locale, which allows users to preprogram setting changes in response to the user’s location, the battery power, and other variables—so that a user could “ensure . . . cellphone ringers are turned off on Sunday mornings or when the church’s location is sensed,”

and various obligatory useless but fun games, like Bonsai Blast.

Bonsai Blast

The downsides of the G1 phone: the hardware isn’t as snazzy as the iPhone hardware (worse screen quality, poor camera); although it’s not officially a Google phone, Google products (like Gmail) are the best integrated apps; you can’t store many apps on the phone at once, though you can continually re-download them from the Market.

The consensus seems to be that the G1 phone isn’t as good as the iPhone yet, but that may change as more applications are rolled out in the coming months. Most importantly, Android is an operating system, and G1 is just the first piece of hardware running it. Hopefully, there will be many different phones developed to run Android. T-Mobile is already planning to cooperate with hardware providers to offer more Android phones (some of which will be less Google-focused); Motorola has an Android phone planned for 2009. The whole idea of creating an open source mobile operating system is that it can run on better and better hardware while developers create more and more interesting applications. We’ll keep an eye out.

—Elisabeth Oppenheimer

(Brief new blog contributor bio: I’m a Stanford law student and Future of the Internet groupie. I’ll be bringing you updates on developments in contingently generative platforms and other topics.)