The first Android smartphone with push to talk service has been announced by Motorola and is called the i1. Push-to-talk service has been improved on the i1 with the ability to view who is calling even when you’re viewing your calendar, watching a movie, reading a document, or composing an e-mail.

This little full 3.1″ HVGA touch screen smartphone offers beauty that is more than skin-deep. It can withstand harsh conditions of shock, vibration, dust, and even blowing rain under military specifications. I don’t know with regular users but that would seem more than enough.

Designed to work as a business phone, you can view and edit MS Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets. You can send an email or surf the internet through iDen or WiFi. You just have to use the built-in Opera 5 Mini browser for both connections or if you’re on WiFi, better use the native Android browser that has Flash 8 capability. You might not help to inquire whether a camera is present in the device. The quick answer is “yes” and it has 5 megapixels as well as flash with the added capability of geo-tagging. If you need to get all the action, you can also record videos and store it in a micro-SD card on the device. With the Android operating system, you can customize the i1 with thousands of applications available on the Android Market.

The company’s newest face for the rugged push-to-talk service is Mike Rowe which you might have known went down and dirty with several jobs. That was nothing really with the device but might sure tell you how rugged this phone is.