There are now a number of reviews out there of the G1 including scathing ones from Boy Genius and less scathing from the Android Community. However, one issue that seems to have been highlighted by many is that lack of a touchscreen keyboard.

In an earlier post I mentioned shapewriter. It seems that 3rd party software will be used to plug the hole initially that is missing with this release of the G1 / Android. ‘Dima70′ also kindly added a comment that points to the following sites:

SlideIT – http://www.mobiletextinput.com/Product/SlideIT/SlideIT.php

Swype – http://www.swypeinc.com/

Which seem to offer alternative touchscreen keyboard inputs.

I’m sure we will see more traditional pop up qwerty keyboards appear and I also hope we’ll see some more ‘whacky’ designs such as the ‘fitaly’ keyboard making an appearance soon.

It seems that the Google Chrome browser which has (at the time of writing) already been downloaded by 14 million people is likely to be part of the base Android platform. I have heard rumours that this will be a cut down version with much of the desktop version’s ‘thread safe’ tab browsing but that early versions may not have Google Gears. Here’s hoping that later versions integrate Gears as it would probably be of more benefit in a mobile environment than anywhere else. One of the benefits of Gears is that it allows the use of the web in offline mode and reduces the number of calls to servers by using a local cache. However, this in turn may raise further security issues as to how that local data is protected (i.e. should it be encrypted).

Chrome itself has also been the subject of attacks by the media for lauching with code based on an insecure version of Webkit. Expect a patch soon.

I believe one of the key factors that will determine the success or failure of the first android phones is how simple it is to enter text. Some of the early videos coming out on YouTube show devices with qwerty keyboards. However, I was also interested to see one of the winners of the first round of the ADC was ‘Writing Pad’ from Shapewriter . Shapewriter is already available for the iPhone and seems to be getting some good feedback.

If you really want to know how it works there is even a paper from one of the co-creators of shapewriter on the technology behind it called SHARK² (or “SHorthand Aided Rapid Keyboarding Squared” !) here .