It has arrived- the google phone.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121300336.html
Rumured to have a snapdragon under the hood and voice to text functionality.
To be honest Im not very excited- I want a hardware keyboard, and I prefer maemo to android (although being able to control the phone with voice commands is tempting), but what do you think?

I think the Droid will remain the best Android phone. But a good firmware update for the N900 could put them both to bed. In other words, if this new phone is to succeed, it will be on marketing alone, the specs aren't very hot.

Droid advantages:

1. Keyboard- Huge issue if you like the game emulators and Android is currently game emulator heaven.
2. 3430 chipset is more balanced option. Snapdragon uses clock cycles to make up for weaker DSP and GPU, so is reported to be more power hungry. Phone manufacturers are capping snap anywhere from 600 to 750mhz.

Curious if Google added more memory for apps on their device. I loaded a LOT of apps to the Droid and still had 182mb(edit) remaining.

If the Google device had a KB and the 3430, it would be the best, since I doubt HTC would block the micro sd slot with the battery like Droid

182... gb? :/

Personally, I'm curious to see what Android can be when it isn't constrained by the carriers. For one thing, it just might be totally open. Maybe even more open than Maemo, no?

Also, for me, I'd be happy with a really lightweight model, which means no keyboard, which is OK with me if it's well-done. I wish the sucker would have a 4" screen, but at this point, that's dreaming.

[Edit: Turns out it's not dreaming. It's expected to be physically very similar to the HTC Passion/HD2, which means a 4.3" screen, 5-1/2 ounces total weight, and still a microSD card -- exactly the form factor I want.]

I understand people are critical of the way everything is built on java, and there's been unhappiness with the Android App Store. But maybe this one will be better: heck, remember when Motorola came out with "the first iPod phone," which was garbage? Maybe that's how Google feels about what's done to their Android. As for the programming/java-based limitations, I just don't know enough.

I root for Maemo. But even for FOSS advocates, this could possibly be a real temptation.

Alternatively, it just might put a chink in the carriers' wall.

I have a rooted android phone.. thats about as open as android gets.... I still prefer my N810's Maemo 4 or Mer over the Android OS. I have tried to get into development for the Android but I have to learn Java, and a custom SDK, and while I have written a few small things I never released on the market.. it was a pain.

For the N810 I was able to get right into it because of how similar it was to the debian/*buntu base. Recompiling software for the ARM was easy enough and learning Python or C++ with GTK/QT is a more rounded option since a developer can then develop applications for both Desktop Linux and a mobile device without having to learn a whole new language or SDK.

I hope for Maemo 5 to be the future.. and I was one that didn't want to see the phone capabilities into the N900 because I didn't want it to be bastardized or locked out like the carriers want. Nokia got around this by offering a phone with no subsidization. Which is great and I understand the ideology.... unfortunately it takes it out of my price range to have =-(. So for now.. I must envy all of you with the N900 while dealing with my cramped rooted android phone *cry*.

Uh, no, as in 'no it won't be.'

After a week with a N900/Maemo, I'm not the least bit tempted to go back to anything running Android.

My understanding is that Android, in the form given to manufacturers/carriers, is open, and then they fiddle with it for their own hardware and for their own greedy monopolistic reasons, and in that fiddled-with form they release it to the consumer. Without the "middle man," why would it not be as open as it is in its pre-hardware-embodied state? And how is that not as open as Maemo?

Depending on what you mean by "Android" that's not entirely correct.

Android is a series of things, it's a linux kernel (much like Maemo), it's a virtual machine that runs on top of that kernel (like the Blackberry), and it's a bunch of applications and frameworks that run on top of the virtual machine (what applications depends on whether the phone is a "google experience phone" like the G1 and Mytouch, or branded without Google like the Hero and a bunch of others).

The only thing that differs between different Android phones (of the same OS version) is the UI (HTC uses something called "sense", Motorola uses "motoblur", Sony uses something called "Rachel") which is a replacement for how the phone looks, and what applications come installed on it and/or are available for download.

Parts of Android are open, and parts are not. By "open" I don't know if you mean "open source" or "open to being messed with".

The Android kernel is open source, the applications which ship on Google experience phones are not (see the recent Cyanogen rukus). HTC's proprietary Sense UI is not open source.

Android is not as "open" as Maemo in the sense that you do not have as low level of access to the hardware (as development is either done using the Dalvik VM, or using some of the specific low-level system calls made available by the NDK)

Different people have different requirements for how open their device is. Some people want the openness of Maemo; to some Maemo isn't even open enough (as there are non-open drivers used for hardware support) and they either talk to their friends on tin cans connected by strings, or use an OpenMoko.

There is no reason to believe that a Google released Android phone would differ greatly from either of the other first two Android phones. It would be nice to blame the carriers or the manufacturers for "crippling" Android, but that's not really true.

Yeah... I held a high regard for Google and it's "Android" OS up until that fiasco. I happen to use Cyanogen's Mod's and they have increased the usefulness of my Android phone significantly. Granted, as always, the community found ways around the Google limitations - and obviously Google has a right to defend it's intellectual property - but that entire scenario should have been handled differently IMHO.

My respect meter for Google dropped a bit. Google has been trying to get a public face with the open source community with a lot of their practices lately which would make me think a "Google" phone would be a slightly less-restricted phone than your average Android-based phone.... but I'm not so sure anymore.