HTC G1: 1.5 million units pre-ordered

Even though it is still not yet officially on sale, the HTC G1, the first phone to ship with Google's Android operating system is already proving incredibly popular.

Its carrier in the United States, T-Mobile, has announced that its entire stock of the phone has already been allocated to existing customers seeking to upgrade.

Even though it doesn't technically go on sale for another ten days, then, this means that over one and half millions of the handsets have already been ordered.

No room for error

Given the enormous popularity of a phone so few people have actually seen in the flesh so far, we suspect that first impressions are going to be very important:  the G1 will have to be a success from the off when it actually arrives in the next few weeks.

Having said that, however, the phone's developers have done their best to make the new product a success: a very tight collaboration between Google (for the software) and HTC (for the hardware), with both companies focusing a lot of effort on a single handset is not without precedent.

The last phone that everybody was talking about, the Apple iPhone, was a 'unique' product, too.

The resemblance ends there, though, as the phones each have a very different look and feel.  While the iPhone features a single large multi-touch screen, the G1 also includes a sizeable QWERTY keyboard. 

And as for looks, we think we can leave that one to you ...