So the septics will lap it up then (assuming google beat the drum hard enough).

I want one of these real bad. A simple and powerful phone. Something I can tinker with and make my own apps on.

When is it coming to the UK???

@AC:

The first one (HTC) is going to be a brick. Wait for the second 'Androidphone' from Samsung. Much better.

Personally (and I'm looking at a picture of one right now!), I think the iPhone is going to have no trouble against the 1st gen.

openmoko freerunner neo.

Bad news is they sold out, so I have no evidence that they actually exist. The specs are open. Google could ask a contract manufacturer to build some. They would be ready in at about 12 weeks (component lead time).

Porter's five forces explain it all here. The industry is operates within the context of his five identified forces: (supplier power, buyer power, barriers to entry, threat of substitutes, and industry rivalry), or six forces if you add "power of the channel".

The operators end up with all of the power. A phone with no restrictions will come on the operators' terms no matter how much anyone wants one. (Also - most of the things people want to do with their net connections only serves to reduce the end costs to the customer, not the operator.)

The iPhony will stand as a one-of-a-kind-deal as ATT was desperate to get publicity and subscribers so they were willing to bend their rules to try to get a leg up on the competition. I understand the pull of Android but the operators have got to be figuring out how to cripple it so they can keep their lock on your connections. There is too much money at stake here.

I am so sick and tired of the networks and manufacturers deciding what programs I can and cannot run on my cell phone. Nokia even decides what java apps I can use.

I thought it was MY cell phone when I bought it, but I guess not.

I am really looking forward to the day when there are actual, truly open source mobiles.

»Tøny

"I thought it was MY cell phone when I bought it, but I guess not"

Thought, wrong, guess, correct.

Still the equivalent 'you'll see what I want you to see damn it' in the internet world (i.e. AOL) is a big FAIL, so hopefully one day things will be different in the mobile world.

If Google were serious about that spectrum they bidded on a while back, _then_ an 'open' platform would have been plausible.

...N810 Internet Tablet for the past week. Android is pretty impressive for what is an unfinished product, it actually performs as well if not better than the stock Nokia Maemo OS (Diablo), and it's clear that Android is designed with the mobile device in mind while the Nokia Maemo OS is just a badly thought out hash job with desktop applications ported to a mobile device but retaining their desktop UI. Android looks good, and if the apps deliver on their promise it will make an interesting and credible alternative to the iPhone. Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm will have some catching up to do (or in the case of Palm, a LOT of catching up!)