Slightly handicapped today trying to cover the Google-phone launch off a livecast because the names of the speakers were announced without being spelled out. The interface of the T-Mobile G1's Android platform looked good, judging from the video, and certainly faster than the prototype I saw at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. It apparently lacks some of the multi-touch gestures on the iPhone, but allows you to flick through pages and choices in much the same way.

Google's man was making much of the fact that ithe platform is open-source. "This is great for third-party developers. We really believe Open is going to drive the mobile Internet," he said.

Speakers also claimed that mobile web use has not yet taken off because of a lack of devices. This is, of course, nonsense. The mobile web was slow to take off because it was too expensive, and the charging was opaque, so that you never knew of much you would have to pay. Much the same reason, in fact, why people are reluctant to use their mobiles abroad.

Fixed web access never took off until prices became affordable on a flat rate and this is beginning to happen on mobile. T-Mobile's £40-a-month for a 'free' G1 is not much for a business user but at £480 a year it will look a lot to many private users.

The G1 phone got a barbed welcome from the LiMo Foundation, which was established to promote the use of a mobile Linux platform.

LiMo executive director Morgan Gillis said in a statement that the launch, following that of 23 Limo phones from various vendors, provided "further support to the widely held view that Linux is now positioned to become the most widely deployed [operating system] within open mobile handsets."

He went on caustically that he expected Google to answer "important questions outstanding" since the Google Android platform was announced .last year ago.

These included the question of why Google had elected to build its own platform "rather than working collaboratively with the mobile industry on the available alternatives".

He also wanted to know which services would be available on Android handsets but not on other open products, and whether G1 users would have have an open and free choice about whether or not they subscribed to Google's services.