Everybody’s waiting for T-Mobile’s big announcement: the release of Google’s new Android Phone, which is expected to be introduced on September 23. The gadget will be the first one to use the search giant’s open-source Android operating system, a platform that allows handset makers and wireless operators to develop innovative applications.

Called the Dream, the phone is said to be fitted with a large touch screen, a swivel-out QWERTY keypad and a trackball for navigation, the latter two resembling the ones that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphone offers their users. Speaking of the competition, apart from running against the aforementioned device on the mobile phone market, the Dream will also have to face Apple, Symbian and Microsoft.

Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal stated that the company that would be shipping Google’s product was Taiwanese manufacturer High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC), a member of the Open Handset Alliance, a statute which enables open-source operating systems such as Android to run on their hardware.

HTC estimates that sales will range from 600,000 to 700,000 units this year, while analysts reckon that the number of units to be sold until the end of 2008 will be somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000.

The launch announcement gave no pricing details or availability dates. But press reports said that the Dream would go on sale to existing T-mobile customers later this month for 149 dollars, with delivery expected in mid October.

On the same day, Google offered a limited viewing of the Dream in London during a presentation at Google Developer Day. Mike Jennings, a development advocate for Android, used the phone to create an app that bounced a blue dot within the device’s screen, showing those present that the Dream features an accelerometer. No other features were revealed to the audience at that moment.

The Android platform was officially launched last year, on November 5, as a result of a collaboration between Google and HTC, Intel, Motorola, T-Mobile, nVIDIA and Qualcomm, with one sole purpose: to develop open standards for mobile devices. Google is working on boosting the quality of Web browsing, enhancing the audio and video experience for mobile phones.

The Linux-based Android has opened up broad flexibility and ease of development for handset makers, and it is certain that the consumers will eventually benefit greatly from the new features and the efficiency of the hardware use by the upcoming Android handsets.

The Android platform features an application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components, a Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices, optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional), media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF) and few other things like Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent) and camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent).

Google’s Android mobile phone is expected to hit the market in October.