The Android Opportunity
As a recent Android convert, I am confused by all the "issues" that people keep mentioning.  Everything on my phone Just Works.  When I change the color of a calendar on Google Calendar, the color on my phone's calendar widget changes.   When I change a contact on my phone, GMail and Google Voice update almost instantly.  When I dial a number on the normal dialpad, my call is automatically routed through Google Voice.  When someone who is not in my contacts calls me, a little message pops up with the White Pages lookup results.  (This is a third-party app.)  When I feel the need to tweet a picture, I click a button, the camera turns on, I take the picture, write some text, and my picture and tweet are posted.  When someone messages me on Google Talk, and my computer's Jabber session is idle, my phone makes a noise and I see their message.<p>I was on the train today, and wanted to catch up on HN.  I read five or six articles, and all of them rendered perfectly in the included browser.<p>Basically, this is what I consider an absolutely perfect phone experience.  I could not be happier, as an end user.  (And as a developer, I am <i>really really</i> happy.)<p>I am just confused as to what these iPhone converts are doing.  I think they are expecting an iPhone clone instead of a completely different smartphone.<p>One more thing.  I found this comment especially ignorant:<p><i>Android suffers from the same issues that have plagued Linux on the desktop for years: the lack of integration between software and hardware, buggy and under-featured applications, a lack of attention paid to user experience issues. The encouraging openness and bits of innovation in Android are overshadowed by mediocrity.</i><p>What does this even mean?  I see perfect integration between my apps (and the Google apps on my computer), and of course, the underlying OS kernel has no effect on the user experience unless it is really bad.