In preparation for the launch, T-Mobile is getting its house in order. On Thursday, it announced it was expanding its 3G network from 13 markets in the United States to 21 by the middle of next month, growing to 27 markets by the end of 2008.

'Absolutely Not Coincidental'

The Android handset will be officially announced on September 23 and available next month. The HTC Dream, aka G1, will be the first device using the new open Android platform, whose development has been spearheaded by Google.

Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said that T-Mobile's expansion of its 3G network just as it is about to roll out the first Android-based device "is absolutely not coincidental."

He added that T-Mobile has been planning to expand its 3G network "for a long, long time," but that it ran into problems with spectrum it had purchased being vacated. T-Mobile spent more than $4 billion in 2006 to acquire licenses to that spectrum.

This launch is "very significant" for the company, Greengart said, since T-Mobile has not released any iPhone-like or higher-end multimedia phones, with the possible exception of the Shadow.

"But," he said, "if you're going to launch an Android device, based on Google technology and with an emphasis on Web browsing, you're going to want to expand your 3G network."

Up to 700,000 Units at Launch

Earlier this week, news reports indicated that T-Mobile will ship as many as 600,000 to 700,000 units at launch, which is higher than previous analyst estimates of 300,000 to 500,000. Analysts have described the higher number of units as an ambitious goal for one carrier in one country to sell in the first few months.

Last month, the Federal Communications Commission granted authorization for the device.

One big question is what the first Android device will look like, and what it will do. Some preliminary reports from unnamed sources indicate that it will be heavier than the iPhone, and will have a large touch screen, a swiveling full keyboard, and a navigation trackball.

Android is an open-source mobile-device platform, developed by Google and backed by the Open Handset Alliance, which includes several dozen industry-related companies.

It has created a great deal of excitement because the platform offers the possibility of a mobile environment that is driven from the ground up, rather than top-down from major phone companies. The Linux-based operating system software itself is freely available, and Android phones will be able to run applications developed by countless third-party developers -- a potentially dynamic ecosystem that the iPhone has also entered.