Traditionally, October marks the true arrival of autumn, along with the incessant stress of papers and exams, the brief (if not glorious) escape of fall break and the eventual parading of costumed trick-or-treaters through the streets on Halloween. This October, however, will mark the release of the next round of the smartphone revolution, with the introduction of the T-Mobile G1, the first handset to run Android, the new mobile operating system from Google.

The T-Mobile G1: The G1 is the first smartphone to feature Android, Google's new mobile operating system.The darling prodigy in the smartphone world over the last year-or-so has been Apple’s iPhone. Although Apple’s elegant industrial design was a welcome breath of fresh air upon a clique of stodgy, “beige-box” business phones, the true brilliance of the iPhone was undoubtedly in the software. The version of Mac OS running on the iPhone completely blew the competition out of the water, offering users a whole new perspective on their mobile lives.

Obviously, then, Google is looking at casting its lot into a very crowded market. The iPhone and this year’s iPhone 3G have sold over 10 million units by some estimates, making it the second best-selling handset in the world, trailing only behind the ubiquitous Motorola RAZR V3.

Android, then, is attempting to bridge the gap between the utility and attractiveness of the iPhone OS, and the ubiquity and “business appeal” of BlackBerry and other mobile operating systems like Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. Google has assembled the “Open Handset Alliance” as a sort of corporate fellowship charged with accomplishing this monumental task. The OHA is comprised of companies from all stages of the mobile development cycle, including carriers like T-Mobile, manufacturers like Taiwanese HTC (producers of the aforementioned G1 smartphone) and software developers like Google. These member companies are hoping that by working together, they can exploit their control over every aspect of a smartphone to reproduce the unified hardware-software-carrier synergy that put the iPhone leaps-and-bounds above everyone else.

From the looks of it, Android is definitely a giant leap in the right direction. Like Apple with Mac OS, Google built Android on top of Linux, a powerful and versatile operating system that can already be found in countless computers, servers and devices across the world. From advance reviews in the blogging world, the interface appears to be sleek and responsive, capturing the feel of a modern operating system that has eluded so many others. Additionally, Google has been able to leverage its powerful suite of “cloud” applications — Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Documents and the like — to give Android an incredible level of connectivity. Upon activating the phone, all you need to do is type your Google account name and password, and you are instantly connected to all of your data living in the cloud.

Of course, the iPhone is a much better multimedia phone because its iPod heritage allows it to benefit from Apple’s thriving music and video business. Android, as distributed on the G1, doesn’t even have a bundled video player (except for Google’s YouTube player, of course), nor a 3.5-millimeter jack to even allow the use of a pair of normal headphones. But ultimately these are decisions that future Android-enabled carriers and hardware manufacturers can correct without the help of Google. Android has a completely open “software development kit,” as opposed to Apple’s relatively Orwellian level of secrecy and control, which should allow developers to create whatever software is missing. And although the HTC’s design prowess has rubbed off on the G1, there’s nothing to stop another company — say Motorola, also an OHA partner — from constructing a very media-centric device (complete with a headphone jack) built on Android.

Right now, if the iPhone and G1 were together on the shelf at my local wireless store (they aren’t, because AT&T exclusively carries the former and T-Mobile the latter), I would likely still opt for the iPhone, if only because it has been on the market for over a year and thus is a more mature product. However, I think the G1 marks the first serious competition that Apple has faced since launching the iPhone, and this is certainly a good thing. It’s also not the last competitor either; Nokia recently launched the Xpress Music 5800, and RIM has the BlackBerry Storm ready to launch very soon, both of which are full touch-screen devices that have clearly borrowed some inspiration from Cupertino. These new developments coming out of the reinvigorated smartphone industry will be interesting to watch, and should produce some great products in the near future.