I’ve been testing Rogers’ latest prototype build of the HTC Dream smartphone running Google’s Android operating system and, as you’d expect so close to its June 2nd launch, it’s near complete. The only tweaking left is to its support for Active Sync, a feature missing from the phone’s launch in the US, one that allows for better access to work e-mail accounts.

The real benefit of the Dream is for heavy Google users as Android is designed around a special synchronicity. The moment you use the phone to sign into any Google service; Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, etc. the phone blossoms like the Kalahari desert after its annual flooding, instantly populating every Google service with your own culture of e-mails, contacts, video clips, apps, and appointments. It’s one thing to read about it, another to experience personally. Within minutes of first powering on the phone, I accessed the Android Market to look at the App selection. To do so I had to sign in with my Google account. Once I was done browsing the market, I switched over to the phone itself and began to punch in a number to dial.

Instead of numbers, letters appeared on the screen and instantly it brought up matches to the first names of people from my Gmail contacts list. I hadn’t noticed the transformation at all, suddenly the phone reflected my own world, it was full of my own personal content. And when the time came to wipe it clean so I could hand the prototype back to Rogers, a simple factory reset reversed the process and once again the handset was as empty as the Kalahari before the flood.

Using the phone I’ve realized that, more than any other smartphone in recent years, the Dream is designed to deliver the feel of a desktop, of a workspace that’s nestled where you can lay out everything just the way you like it. The screen can change between three different desktops, each with movable icons and support for widgets including clocks, search bars, and music players. With the screen flipped up, the QWERTY keyboard sits in a shelf with a little ledge on the right for your fingers to reach up and access the trackball, menu button, and back button. If your fingertips could drink coffee, a cup holder would fit into that ledge perfectly.

The homescreen of menu icons we’re used to with all phones still exists, but tucked off to the side. A virtual tab appears on the side of the screen and you can quickly pull it to bring the menu screen into view and then tuck it away when you’re done.

I like Android immensely, the look and feel, the way information and options are laid out. As with all of Google’s products, there’s a helpful ease to the way tools are always at hand, and a pleasant charm to their style and presentation. The first time you turn on their handset, it asks you to “Tap the Android to begin”.

Drawbacks, there are a few, namely the keyboard. Its keys are almost flush to the surface, little bumps that I found difficult to adapt to and that greatly slowed my typing speed. Web surfing can be hit or miss, although it delivers full HTML pages, with the option for multiple windows, the ability to gently push the page around to take it in is fine for reading an article or a blog post, but difficult for navigating a portal or service like Facebook. Using the trackball to quickly move through highlighted patches is no help either.

I’m not big on the multiple navigation systems. You have a touch screen to push information around, a keyboard to enter text and use hotkeys, a menu and back button for navigating options, and a trackball for more precision selection. It takes awhile to learn which of these is supposed to be used under which circumstance and in which combination. Yes, I did become used to it, but it just seemed like too much work having to constantly switch from one control system to the next and back.

The Android App Market is up and running and already surpasses RIM’s own App World in selection and ease-of-use. Data speeds on the phone are really quick and downloading and installing a new app takes a mere moment and can happen in the background. Rogers says there will be more than 3,200 Apps available at launch, which seems true although the quality of the selection isn’t as consistent as the catalog offered by Apple for the iPhone (which says something, doesn’t it?). Phones powered by Google’s Android support open source software so the Market is full of apps that have that home-made feel to them. Some work poorly, others lack any proper description or instruction, and a great many of them are slapped together clients for other services. This is fine if you’re technically savvy and used to having to figure things out on your own, but will no doubt cause some frustration for the most casual of consumers who may not understand why the Facebook app isn’t made by Facebook themselves.

Amongst the best Apps are the ones by Google themselves including Google Sky (which works beautifully) and Google Maps Editor. As a Twitter user I’ve fallen for Twidroid, a surprisingly polished client for the micro-blogging service that remains one of my favorites from the Android market.

I’m still working on my full review for the Dream in time for its launch next week, but so far it’s better than many of the smartphones that have been on offer here in the Great Wireless North.