Some of the gurus in the #android IRC channel and RyeBrye, have discovered a hidden multi-touch feature in the G1. After careful examination of the commented-out code in the phone’s touchscreen driver, some were able to re-enable some multi-touch gestures.

According to Gizmodo, this isn’t the first time that HTC has shipped a phone with hidden multi-touch, but definitely a nice bonus.

Hopefully since Android is open-source, maybe someone out there in the dev space will find and enable all the hidden features of the operating system and phone.

Peter Chou, chief executive and co-founder of HTC, said in a recent interview that he expects to ship over 600,000 G1s this year. Also, although he didn’t release an exact figure for 2009, he did state "in general, we think we can do more next year."

Regarding the Google-enabled device’s potential at luring consumers away from Apple’s iPhone, Mr. Chou pointed to the QWERTY keypad. "Americans are very keyboard-oriented." he said.

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The new Google HTC G1 Android phone officially launched today, and so did the Android Open Source Project for developers. This is a mixed bag of news. First the apps will be free until next year, but that means premium paid applications won’t appear until next year. The incentive for developers to develop good apps is good however. Developers get 70 percent of the profit, while carriers and billing fees absorb the other 30 percent, with Google getting nothing.

As of 8 am this morning the G1 phone went on sale at T-Mobile stores in major cities. All stores that only have a demo of the phone will take orders for the phone.

There has been some criticism of the phone, since it isn’t exactly like the iPhone. There are a lot of incredible built in apps like the ability to comparison shop before you buy. Just scan the UPC code of a product, with the help of your camera, to compare prices from online merchants and nearby local stores. You can read product reviews and even build an on-line wish list to share with your friends.

To learn more about the G1 visit the T-mobile G1 site. To learn more about Android visit their site.

The new HTC G1 Android Google phone has a lot of features you might not know about yet, so here’s a few videos to get you up-to-speed. With the release of the G1, the iPhone now has real competition. Although the G1 has less disk storage space than iPhone, G1 does have a USB port that will probably offer the ability to access all types of files, including audio and video, from a thumb drive plugged into it.

I wonder if T-Mobile will sell me the G1 Android without a contract? If not, we’ll need to post some jail break videos.

The HTC G1 is the first cellphone, from T-Mobile, that will feature Google’s Android operating system. Considering how simple the interface looks, compared to our lovable iPhones…let’s just say Android is still in the game.