The G1 is built around a model of openness, enabling developers to create applications — software programs, called “apps” for short — that will succeed or fail according to the feedback from the online community. Naturally, these community-contributed programs need a marketplace where G1 users can find them, and the Android Market provides just that.

This week, I installed various applications from the Android Market on a G1 and tested them out. Google (GOOG) says it will launch with around 40 to 50 applications in this virtual store, and these and all other apps will be available free of charge from now until at least the start of next year.

BreadCrumbz makes maps.

I found these apps to be useful, entertaining and mostly straightforward. There were a few that I felt tried to jam too much into one application, such as BreadCrumbz, an app that asks users to add pictures, instructional arrows and labels to maps that they make for friends. Other apps kept it short and sweet, like Wi-Fi Toggle — a one-touch button that turns wireless capability on or off to save battery power.

The G1’s apps are more utilitarian than most apps I’ve tested for Apple’s iPhone — and not quite as visually pleasing. I even compared one G1 program, Plusmo College Football, directly with the same app running on the iPhone, and I missed the artsy touches of the Apple (AAPL) version — like menus that flipped 180 degrees when selected rather than simply opening.

One downside: Only a measly 70 megabytes of internal flash memory are reserved on the G1 for storing these third-party applications. Once you fill that limited internal storage space, you have to delete some of your apps to add more. You can’t currently store apps on the phone’s roomier removable memory card. (A one-gigabyte microSD comes with the G1.) The iPhone doesn’t set such an arbitrary limit on application-storage space. The Android Market, like Apple’s iTunes, keeps a record of each user’s installed apps so they can be easily downloaded again later at no extra charge (if they carried a fee). But, unlike the iPhone, the G1 can’t back up your apps to a PC or Mac.

The G1’s open model means extra setup steps during app installation. For example, if an application will access certain information — such as a user’s Internet connection, location data (as identified by GPS) or other personal information (calendar, contacts, etc.) — warnings appear during installation, and the user must grant permission. In addition, many apps come with license agreements that must be okayed before users can continue. If something goes wrong with an app, people can post complaints on community boards or email developers, whose email addresses appear during installation.

The Android Market home page.

To offer a general idea of what’s available, I’ve highlighted a handful of apps that I like. I broke the applications into three groups: Functional, Fun (if occasionally kitschy) and Frills.

Functional

Wi-Fi Toggle: This does what it says. Once installed, it adds an icon to the G1’s desktop that provides a quick way to turn Wi-Fi on and off without digging into the settings menu.

Locale: Like Wi-Fi Toggle on steroids, this app allows a user to set up a G1 so it dynamically changes its settings in specific conditions. The settings can respond to calls from certain people or changes in the phone’s battery power, calendar, the user’s location or the time. For instance, the Wi-Fi can automatically turn off, ringer volume can go up or down, desktop wallpaper can change or a post can be sent. Just think of all the churchgoers who could ensure their cellphone ringers are turned off on Sunday mornings or when the church’s location is sensed.

Ringdroid: Make ringtones from your own songs by adjusting bars to mark the start and end of each ringtone. Hitting Save automatically keeps the ringtone, labeled with the song’s name by default, for use on the phone.

Video Player: The G1 doesn’t have a built-in way to play videos, and this app does the trick in a clear-cut, reliable way.

Fun

Movie ShowTimes: This lets people use a finger to flick across the G1’s touch screen to page through movie poster images, titles and brief descriptions. Below each movie description, an on-screen button labeled “Showtimes Near You” uses GPS to generate lists of nearby movie times.

Pac-Man: The classic arcade game never gets old. You can move Pac-Man through his maze with one of three methods: tilting the G1 so its accelerometer moves the Pac-Man, swiping with a finger to point Pac-Man in the right direction or using the trackball to move him around the screen. I preferred the trackball.

Cooking Capsules: This program demonstrates food-making without being either too intimidating or too dull and simplified. Though there were only six “capsules” when I tested it, each includes steps for watching (an instructional video), shopping (using an on-screen list of items) and cooking (with numbered instructions on how to cook the food).

Bonsai Blast is a gaming app that’s now available for the G1.

Bonsai Blast: This colorful, Asian-themed game directs people to shoot colorful marbles at other chains of marbles, with a goal of getting three matching marbles lined up beside one another so they’ll disappear.

Krystle II: Turns your G1’s entire screen into a picture of fur that purrs and vibrates as you touch it. There’s no real point, but Krystle II is addictive and strangely comforting during long conference calls.

Frills

Ecorio: This well-intended app aims to track users’ travel carbon footprints in order to make them more responsible for the environment. It asks users to enter things like recent transit routes and carpools and suggests ways to reduce and offset people’s footprints.

Maverick: An IM program that allows people to add scribbles, location data or even photos to active instant-messaging conversations. Maverick signs users into Google Talk and Picasa simultaneously, adding IM images into an auto-generated Picasa album for later viewing.

PicSay: Add word balloons, titles, props and effects to digital photos captured and/or stored on the G1, then send the images via multimedia messaging service or email, or save one as a caller ID.

There are many more G1 apps to try, and developers are expected to keep making them for this new device. As with the iPhone, apps obtained for the G1 from the Android Market enable it to morph into a different device with different tools every day.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

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At least one smartphone manufacturer is doing something about this. This week, Research In Motion (RIMM) introduced the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220, available for $150 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile (DT). This device is the first BlackBerry in a flip phone, or clamshell, form. Like RIM’s mainstream, candy-bar-shaped BlackBerry Pearl, the Flip uses a SureType keyboard, which has condensed keys and relies on predictive text software.

The Pearl Flip uses a SureType keyboard, which takes up less space.

After using the Pearl Flip for a week, I’ve found it to be a stylish messaging device that works well as a comfortable phone. I really liked its exterior screen, which is designed to show previews of incoming messages, saving people the trouble of flipping open the device. It runs on T-Mobile’s slow EDGE network, but has built-in Wi-Fi and the ability to automatically connect to saved, nearby wireless networks.

First-time smartphone buyers will likely find the Pearl Flip to be a good fit. When it flips open, a special hinge drops the top half of the device slightly behind the bottom half, and a handy trackball makes navigation easy. The Flip’s Web browser enables streaming videos that look sharp on its interior screen, and a microSD card slot supports up to 16 gigabytes of memory.

But current BlackBerry owners who want to switch to a device with a more comfortable phone may have trouble adjusting to the Pearl Flip’s SureType keyboard — especially if they’re used to a device with a full QWERTY keyboard. Though the Pearl Flip’s keyboard is a generous size and its keys are flat and easy to press, its SureType design assigns two letters to almost every key, which can be frustrating to use when predictive text guesses a different word than that which is intended.

The Pearl Flip 8220 is RIM’s first flip phone BlackBerry.

The Pearl Flip supports T-Mobile’s Unlimited HotSpot Calling, a service that doesn’t use any minutes on phone calls begun in Wi-Fi zones. Even if a user leaves the Wi-Fi zone in which he or she started a phone conversation, the call passes over to the T-Mobile cellular network without dropping out. This service costs $10 monthly in addition to regular service charges.

When I made calls on the Pearl Flip, friends on the other line noted how crisp and clear our connection sounded. And best of all, the Pearl Flip’s long, clamshell profile was easy to hold and fit snugly and comfortably between my ear and shoulder when I needed two hands to carry things.

BlackBerry’s signature red light blinks in this device’s top corner to indicate new messages. The 1.6-inch exterior screen displays about 25 words (give or take) from newly received emails, instant messages, SMS, MMS, calendar notifications and task reminders. If a message is received from a contact to whom a photo is assigned, that photo also shows up on the external screen to identify the sender. Side buttons let users scroll up or down through these previews.

This display is designed so that the same message being previewed externally will appear on the internal screen as soon as the Pearl Flip is opened. This makes sense because people will want to reply to some emails or read their entire contents after seeing a short preview. But my device didn’t do this at first; instead, the internal screen seemed completely unrelated to the external screen. I finally got this feature to work after my external screen froze and I rebooted the Pearl Flip. RIM said it hadn’t seen this behavior before, and wasn’t sure what had caused it.

The interior screen measures 2.4 inches diagonally and has a resolution of 240×320 pixels, which is a larger, higher resolution screen than most basic cellphones. While using Wi-Fi, I pulled up YouTube.com and watched a video. It played without skipping or stopping while streaming directly from the Web. A higher-resolution video, which was saved to my device, automatically played in horizontal mode so as to take up the entire screen; YouTube videos play vertically, without using the full screen.

Up to 10 email accounts can be set up on the Pearl Flip; I had no problems using Hotmail, .Mac and Gmail accounts. I also signed into AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk on the Pearl Flip. Along with these messaging programs, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and BlackBerry Messenger also come pre-installed and ready to use.

If my Pearl Flip was closed and I remained signed into an instant-messaging client, notifications appeared on the external screen telling me who was sending an IM and what it said. When I opened the device, I was automatically directed to the screen where I could reply to the instant message.

I tested the T-Mobile Unlimited HotSpot Calling feature by starting calls using a Wi-Fi network and then leaving the network’s range. The calls remained steady without dropping or fading, and if I were a paying customer, I wouldn’t have been charged minutes for those calls. Calls that start out of Wi-Fi zones and end in Wi-Fi zones do deduct minutes. My Pearl Flip had no trouble automatically moving from the cellular network to a Wi-Fi network.

All T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspots, such as at airports or in Starbucks (SBUX), automatically work with the Pearl Flip if you’re registered for the $10 monthly Unlimited Hotspot Calling.

If you’re considering taking the plunge into the always-connected world of smartphones, or if you want a more comfortable phone in your smartphone and don’t mind the quirks of SureType, the Pearl Flip 8220 may be the BlackBerry for you.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Today, Motorola (MOT) is unveiling its $100 Motopure H15 Universal Bluetooth Headset. It’s available from Verizon’s (VZ) stores and Web site, and I’ve been testing it.

While focusing on the new Motopure H15, I also took another look at two noise-canceling headsets we reviewed in May — the $130 Jawbone from Aliph Inc. and the $120 Plantronics (PLT) Discovery 925. I made calls on the three headsets while standing beside a construction crew’s loud generator in busy downtown Washington, D.C., and, in a separate test, running my hairdryer on high in the background.

In both of these loud scenarios, the results favored the Motopure over the Jawbone and Plantronics Discovery. Of the three, the Plantronics headset allowed the most background noise through and made it difficult for people to hear my voice. The Jawbone was much better than the Plantronics headset, but not as good as the Motopure, which dimmed loud background noise to a faint hum and seemed to amp up the volume of my own voice. I called various people and even left myself voicemails so I could hear the differences.

More Microphones

The Motopure H15 uses two microphones, while the Jawbone uses two microphones and one modified microphone that works as a voice-activity sensor. The Plantronics headset uses one microphone. Motorola says one of its microphones hears the user’s voice, the other picks up background noise and a technology called CrystalTalk works to filter that noise out.

In my Motopure testing, I saw at work technology that Motorola says is meant to automatically adjust the headset volume as noises increase or decrease in the background. And at no point during my tests with the headset did friends on the other end of the line notice any odd echoing or fading volume in my voice, as with some headsets.

Snug Fit

Unlike the Jawbone, which — as its name reflects — works by touching bones in the face to eliminate excess noise, the Motopure H15 never touches one’s face. In fact, Motorola cites this as an advantage over the Jawbone because it doesn’t need to touch a user’s face to work. Motorola’s headset fits using a loop of clear plastic that wraps snuggly around the ear, along with an in-ear piece, though it took me a little while to figure out which of its five earbuds fit best.

And unlike the Plantronics headset, which has a larger, triangular-shaped boom, the Motopure has a tiny boom that folds away when not in use. Users receive calls by simply folding the boom down, which instantly turns the headset on and connects to calls. When the boom is closed, the headset turns off to save battery. I liked the finality of closing the boom and knowing my headset was definitely off whenever I put it in my purse. And in its tucked-in position, the Motopure H15 is petite and portable.

But if you’re wearing this headset on your ear, opening and closing the boom is almost impossible. Motorola recommends using the boom as you would a clamshell cellphone: Answer calls by opening the boom before donning the earpiece and end calls by removing the earpiece and closing the boom.

Of course, many users will want to keep the device in their ear for an extended period, rather than fishing for it when a call comes in. For them, the awkwardness of the boom switch may be a problem. They can still keep the Motopure on with the boom opened, receiving and ending calls at any time by simply pressing the large Call button. In this state, the handset is in standby mode rather than off — the same as most Bluetooth headsets waiting for calls.

One Headset, Two Phones

A plus of the Motopure is its ability to simultaneously pair with two phones, such as a personal cellphone and a work smartphone. Incoming calls to both lines are represented by different colored lights on the headset. But as soon as a call with one phone begins, the Bluetooth link to the second phone is disconnected.

The Plantronics headset also has dual-phone pairing capability, but the Jawbone doesn’t.

According to Motorola, the Motopure’s battery lasts for about 4.5 hours of talk time. The Jawbone’s battery lasts four hours; the Plantronics headset, five hours. In standby, Motopure and the Plantronics Discovery last for about seven days; Jawbone lasts for eight. Pressing and holding the Motopure’s up and down volume buttons spurs an indicator light to glow red, yellow or green to represent battery strength.

I liked the Motopure’s sturdy charging stand, which doubles as a holder for the headset. Though this desktop charger isn’t available today from Verizon, it will be available later this month from other carriers and retailers in a $130 bundle with the headset.

More Colors Later

Today, the Motopure is available in a slate color, but it will be available in black later this month and other colors are tentatively planned for November. The Jawbone and the Plantronics headset are each available in three colors, and Jawbone will release blue and pink headsets later this month.

Overall, the Motopure H15’s noise cancellation worked the best out of these three headsets, and its tiny build and fold-up boom make it a helpful tool for consumers who want quiet conversations no matter where they are.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com