Underwhelmed. It has a keyboard, which is nice, however, $35 a month for a data plan? Why is this a better thing than the $20 a month TMo charges when you buy a SideKick?

All Apple has to do to shoot this thing in the head, is to release a Bluetooth keyboard capability for the iPhone. Then it will be DOA.

I have a hard time believing that Apple will ever put their name on a clunky external keyboard for a phone. The whole idea just screams "ugly" to my sense of aesthetics. Keep an extra gadget in your pocket just so you can type on your phone? (even worse: it'd have to clip on to the phone or something for access to the display). Ick.

All it has to be is a silent driver update. Then it would be an undocumented hack for someone with Google and a Bluetooth keyboard.

An undocumented hack is going to shoot the G1 in the head and make it DOA? I wasn't saying that this couldn't be done. I was saying that Apple would never do it, because it's an aesthetic disaster.

I won't comment on whether or not it's a disaster (MobileMe, anyone), but it's really just not that useful. There is not that much to do on your phone that would require a real keyboard. If you want a real keyboard, get an Eeepc instead of an iPhone.

When the Android was first announced, I wondered which providers would support it, because sooner or later someone was going to develop VOIP capability (like the siphon project for the iPhone), and no one would be paying the provider network access charges.

The G1 seems like a mixed bag. It doesn't appear to excel in any capacity, and it has some big drawbacks - no headphone jack, slow browser, basic media player, etc. Adding to that the fact that it's only available through T-Mobile's sketchy network, and it doesn't seem like the kind of product that will set the world on fire. It's good that Google was able to get a phone out for the holiday season, but I'm thinking that Android's story will play out more in 2009 than this year.

"Gmail account required to sign in and use, no corporate access email available."

I'm sure this is Microsoft's fault - it's not like they are going to offer up a portable mobile outlook or owa integrator.

But I wonder who this hurts in the end, device sales, or Exchange use by SMB's ? - I'm guessing a little bit of both, mostly the latter.

There are free software exchange clients, and it's an open platform. Do the math. :)

The truth is that the baked-in software stack is never going to be what sells this phone. If what the user wants is an expensive, high end, pocket-sized browser appliance, then the iPhone has already cornered that market. Android is trying to be a platform. The extent to which it succeeds is precicely that to which criticisms like yours miss the point. If there are important things that it can't do that aren't addressed by the developer base, then it will fail. If not, then it wins.

How much?

$179 on a 2 year contract, no idea about pricing outside about the US

I've heard that ~ 199, anyway, we'll know very soon

doesn't look like a winner