It wont be much longer before the Google phone, positioned as a rival to Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry, takes the mobile world by storm.

T-Mobile announced that it would unveil the first and highly-anticipated mobile phone based on Google's Android software at a news conference in New York on 23 September. Google showed off the the HTC-manufactured handset at a developer conference in London yesterday, although T-Mobile has kept quiet about the shipping date and pricing.  The handset is said to mimic popular elements of several top smartphones, such as a touchscreen operation remarkably similar to that of the iPhone and a "jog ball," which is a BlackBerry signature navigation tool.  

Last month, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the phone from HTC called the 'Dream' that supports T-Mobile's 1,700-MHz AWS 3G network. According to FCC documents, the HTC Dream will have quad-band GSM/EDGE radios, 1700 WCDMA 3G, Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. As Google, T-Mobile and HTC get ready to formally announce the "Dream", it has been reported that the phone will be in stores as early as next month, just in time to capitalise on the Christmas shopping season.