T-Mobile G1 : Not yet available, already not as good as iPhone

I have been talking to everybody I know about the mobile web for as long as I can remember. I am honestly sick of it. Connectivity everywhere is the promise of the future and the new super-smart devices are making that promise a reality. The frontrunner of these devices is, of course, the Apple iPhone. Maybe you've heard of it. HTC and Research In Motion have been hard at work creating devices that will compete head to head with it. RIM even deciding that 'html email' is something that should come standard, and HTC jumping on the open handset run before anyone else and being the first one with an actual product to show for it, the T-Mobile G1. Too bad Blackberries are still mainly business devices and the G1 is not as open as it should be. They actually had a chance otherwise. For all I talk about the iPhone I want to really point out that the second a better device comes out, I will most likely upgrade to it. Maybe next year, maybe in two years. I am not biased towards the iPhone, Apple is just doing it better than anybody else. I want a device that frees me from my laptop and allows me to do whatever it is that I want to do on the road. If I have to log onto my work server and run a job to check the output when I get home I can SSH in no problem. If I have to check the status of my fantasy team (no matter what fantasy sports service I am using), or if I want to buy tickets to the baseball game on my way there. I can do that all from my iPhone. I can stream music from Pandora or Last.fm. I can twitter with people around me with Twinkle. I can leave notes for myself that sync with all my computers and the internet through Evernote. I don't need to worry about not having 3G because it defaults to EDGE, and it has Wi-Fi for faster transfers and network recognition through Air Sharing. The connectivity possibilities are endless because it uses bluetooth, a 3.5mm headphone jack and the incredibly common iPod universal connector jack. The touch screen is nice, but as I've said before. Its all about connectivity and the applications. I really can't say I feel too confident right now about where the T-Mobile G1 is going. The application store for the G1 is still not ready and whenever it is ready it will not be as robust as the iTunes App Store is now. Plus it seems like Google has dropped the ball when it comes to advertising the thing. What they've shown in the tech demos is amazing. Why are people not talking about this phone? Why is the device 'expandable to 8GB' ?. If there is something Apple learned early, the more storage you put in the device, the more people will want. I think I'm the only one of my friends who has a 8GB iPhone 3G, and thats just because I know I'll be right out that line next year for the third gen iPhone if nothing changes. With a pricetag of $180 for the phone with 1GB, if I wanted to get a 8GB microSD card for it to be comparable to the bottom end iPhone I'd have to spend $23.03 more, just charge me $199 and include the 8GB card? jeez. Why does it not use a normal 3.5mm headphone jack? So if I break my headphones, I have to go to a T-Mobile store to find their special headphones or I need to get a little adapter that I have to carry around. Why?! There is no need for this. I am however, excited that Android finally has a hardware incarnation. Apple desperately needs some competition, maybe they'll stop banning apps because of their "don't compete against Apple" clause in their T&Cs. The full keyboard on the device is also very interesting and I love that it features a 3.1mp camera, the iPhone's camera sucks. I am watching this develop quite rapidly and I am really interested, but somehow, underwhelmed. Somebody at Google has dropped a ball and T-Mobile seems to be tripping on it. God I hope I'm wrong... Here's Wired's comparison of the two devices.