Paranoid Android ??

Whilst I have stated many times how much I "lurves" me Jesus Phone.. There does come a time in a Gadgeteers life when she/he needs something new. I have recently been entertaining the idea of moving to an Android powered phone. For those not in the know "Android is a software platform for mobile devices, powered by the Linux kernel, initially developed by Google..." ( easier to copy and past a quote than to write it meself) . So there you have it .. its a Phone ( at the moment) based operating system. You can see it on T-Mobiles G1 and G2 ( HTC? made) series of phones and some non mobile-network handsets ( HTC's own and Samsung (coming soon) I believe) .

What is appealing to me is the open source nature of the OS .. the flexibility, the potential and the costs . It all seems like such a great package wrapped up into the nifty devices they have. Also, its an (almost) competitor to the Jesus Phone and I do like to support the underdog.

So I set about doing my usual research about the product ( before even purchasing it for once :) ) . Overall, I like what I am seeing. I do have some concerns over Application support/availability, but know that I could deal with that. However an email from a friend highlights a big flaw in the current setup of the phone. Click here to read.It seems that although Google is busy beavering away on OS updates, the design of the phone ( G1 specifically) doesn't allow for large OS revisions .. This is due to the partition layout ( which is basically the memory given over to the Android software operating system) Apparently there is some spare space in newer revisions, BUT it highlights to me a fundamental lack of oversight in the initial design .. ( well that or someone did raise it, but it was ignored due to costs?? or summat similar). In its simplest terms, you have been given a piece of land for free .. a house is put on the land .. edge to edge .. you are then offered a larger house with a pool, but guess what .. you don't have enough land free to fit it .

Where does that leave me at the moment then ? Well I will keep my eye on the development of said platform, and hope that the newer revisions of phones coming out will take this problem into account. In the meantime, I'll stick with my Jesus Phone and wait another few months . Watch this space :)