The only way I think that they would be able to fairly correct this, would be to offer new phones with physical keyboards, 1 gig of memory, and more powerful processers to existing owners at the $179 or lower price. Those of us who are under contract for another two years, and have been doing their beta testing, writing programs, etc. shouldn’t have to wait until our contract is up if we can’t afford $400 or more to replace our underpowered phones. Think about it. We can buy very basic computers for $300 or less.

As early adopters/beta testers/developers, we should demand nothing less. Without us, Android wouldn’t be developing this fast. Google is doing well with Android, and they need to help out the little guys who bought their sub-par devices, and helped to make Android successful.

However, It leaves me to worry… With the talk of these new versions, are they going to leave us early adopters in the dust? I have a G1 and I dont know the limits of its hardware, but it feels like the os pushes the limits of the phone already… I hope these new versions have major improvements, I just hope I dont have to upgrade to get my hands on a new version of android… but maybe thats just the case. My XP machine probably couldnt handle vista, just like an old Imac couldnt run Leopard.

Oh well, i guess thats just how it works. But the thing is… are they gonna bust out a hardware trumping version too soon where I’ll have to dish out another wad of money for a new device at full price before my contract is up? (I cant renew my contract and get that new customer/contract price until a couple of years)

Probably going to get screwed, would google do that to me?

Anyway I wonder how different the phone needs to be to be compatible with the next version of Android?

Why can I not just upgrade since it runs like Java. Java is built on a cross platform bases as it runs of a virtual-layer that can be applied to whatever hardware its other counterparts could run on.

Android kicks Ass! This G1 is by far, the best, most user friendly phone I have ever used. If this phone never got another update again, I’d still be happy with it. Maybe 2.0 IS lame, ask Bill Gates.. how many times have they tried to “improve” something, only to screw it up in the end. Also, now that Ive had more time to think about the drastic jump from version to version.. maybe… just maybe.. they’re experimenting with entirely rewritten kernels hence the reason for the big jumps. Keep up the great info hunting skills Rob!

Better than Symbian … Symbian has some more features, but Android’s user experience is better.

Better than Blackberry … ugh, awful piece of crap that platform is. All it has is business apps, but the presentation/etc.? absolute crap.

Better than the custom OS’s by a ton.

I have to admit I haven’t used WinMo much, but I doubt I ever would anyway.

As for the iPhone … there’s some UI things that Android could do better. But what Android’s problem isn’t “sad” or “deficiency”, it’s that it just hasn’t had time to grow its feature set and application set yet. That’s not matter of “2.0″, that’s just a matter of giving the app developers a little more time to deliver the goods.

I would also wonder if G1 users will see full OS version updates on their current device. I can put newer versions of OS’s on my existing hardware (usually) so I would hope there is some backwards compatibility built in.

@Rich – I agree with your criticism. To take it one step further, maybe Version 3 is Cupcake! Nobody really knows. But I think one thing to get across is that the Android out there now is like a newborn baby. This thing is only going to develop, grow and become more powerful and if you ask me, it is already pretty darn awesome.

Something doesnt sound right in that article, why could they continue on with version 3 when they could just call version 3, version 2? Then say version 1.5 was sad. Thats like Microsoft jumping to Windows 9 and saying 7 and 8 were sad. They dont do that, they simply call them Betas and the final name is 7.

On a somewhat related note: I know a chick that works at google and they have SICK ASS PHONE SKINS with custom android artwork. I’m gonna get her to hook one up for me, and I’ll ask if she’s got any inside buzz about Android V.2 or 3.