Image courtesy of Engadget

I've never hidden my opinion that the T-Mobile G1 is not my idea good industrial design. It doesn't even look like any of HTC's other generally very good industrial design work for Windows Mobile smartphones. So, I was very happy to see the photo above included in Endgadget's article about what they say will be an Android-based smartphone designed by HTC and sold through AT&T Wireless...

HTC Lancaster is a QWERTY slider with Android for AT&T

While it is difficult to tell how well a design works from a single photograph, the supposed HTC Lancaster looks a lot more like HTC's other touchscreen smartphone designs (nice). And, it includes an actual physical QWERTY thumb keyboard that looks useable.

My one concern is that it looks like HTC removed the one T-Mobile G1 design element that I really liked: The mini thumb trackball.