Yet I think Wolda got a point. I said the same it in an earlier post as well: if Android was acceptable (for me), I would already have bought a Moto keyboard and a Moto. The thing is I do want a hardware keyboard, badly, but not at the cost of being forced to use an OS I don't want to use. In the end I would just not use the phone and its holy keyboard.

The ergonomy of the Android UI (which is based on the same paradigms on all Android-based OSes, even open ones) and privacy issues with Google are not an acceptable trade-off for me. However, I do understand that what I am looking for does not exactly match the market, and same goes with several people on TMO I think, otherwise we would not be discussing a new device and its OS here. We would just go to the shop and buy what the market already designed for our needs. Chen's strategy of asking people what they think about the OS options clearly shows that he's aware that it will divide people and be critical to the success of the project, and to be honest it's good to see that he seeks feedback instead of deciding all alone, but I wouldn't want to be him when it will be time to finally decide (partly) based on this thread.

The question is simple: is this phone for the average Joe and can it compete with the big fish already ruling the lake, or is this phone going to be designed according to the weird and unusual preferences of the Joes that still populate TMO? The answer is not simple: both device would be very different, both come with huge risks, and none would be bad. But making a phone that would satisfy both groups and perform equally would be tricky (even with dual-boot, although I'd love to have dual-boot).