A basic “emulator” for the T-Mobile G1 Android phone has been released by none other than T-Mobile itself.

When the site loads, it shows three options in the top right hand corner of your browser window: “360 View”, “Guides” and “Emulator”.

The 360 degree view is that that, automatically spinning around, opening up the screen to show the keyboard beneath, turning from a vertical configuration to a horizontal one, and closing the screen again.

You can see that there are volume buttons on the side, a camera button, a flap covering the charge socket, the words “with Google” on the back, the words “HTC” on the back of the slide-up screen, the camera, the keyboard and main buttons and the track pad.

Manually moving the phone around is limited to the set “pattern” of the 360 degree view, but it still lets you pause the motion so you can see the phone from all sides more clearly.

After than come some basic guides, these show you the “Keyboard slide”, “Battery removal”, “SIM Card Insertion” and “SD Memory Card Insertion”.

The most interesting part of the site is the “Emulator”.

Here you can see what using the Android OS is actually like. Although the demo is effectively “canned”, not giving you “true” access to the Internet, for example, you can click on all the icons, move the screen around, “type” using your mouse on the keys, see what answering a phone call is like, see a new SMS, MMS or email message, bring the “slider” down that shows you your notifications, see the music player, the camera, seeing what Google search, Gmail and Google Maps looks like and all the other G1 Android gPhone features.

It’s clearly no substitute for holding a real G1 in your hands and having a go, but seeing as the US will get it first with most of the rest of the world having to wait until sometime in 2009 to try it, the emulator is the closest many of us will get to the G1 before it lands in local stores.

And even though it’s a “canned” demo, it’s pretty clear to see that version 1 of Google’s phone operating system looks pretty sweet right from the word “go”.

I hope Microsoft’s ogling it and is getting a few clues for Windows Mobile 7!