http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1328/droids.jpg

Apple requires you to sign up before you can write anything for your phone.  The evil bastards at AT&T didn't invest in the infrastructure to handle the demand placed upon it by iPhone users.

The even-more-evil bastards at verizon (used to) require that you pay monthly subscriptions or per-usage fees for everything from uploading your own MP3 ringtone, to downloading your own pictures taken with your own phone, to driving-via-GPS.

But with the Droid, it appears that the still-pretty-darn-evil bastards at VZ, jealous at AAPL's success, have broken with decades of tradition, and allows a programmable device on their network.  Even if 90% of the apps are (much like the Apple store) just some guy's "fart app", or a picture of a glass of beer that empties as you use the phone's accelerometer to pour it down your gullet...

Rather than spending money to take features out of otherwise-functional phones, they finally accept the reality:  handset manufacturers (Motorola, Sony, LG, etc) make the phones without worrying about wireless providers turning all their features off, unless the user pays through the nose.  Software companies (like Google) write the OS for the handset and give it away for free - in exchange for datamining the bits that flow through the users' installed apps (hey, even the company that promises to "do no evil" has gotten a taste for evil...).  And the wireless providers finally stop trying to muscle in on everybody's business and finally accept their role as haulers of the bits, the way the landline telcos were forced to do, back in the 1980s?

The 2000s were the decade through which we were promised convergence: one device for voice, web, email, music, and TV.  Are the 2010s the decade in which we - the consumer - finally get it (fart apps and all) for less than $100/month?

I have a Samsung Highlight touchscreen phone.

Very disappointing, in terms of being about to get much on your phone. Everything's expensive as hell, moreso than Verizon at least. And, it's on T-Mobile, who has pretty crappy service. I have to go outside of my house to make a call on it or the call will have terrible quality and eventually disconnect. As for texting, I have to raise the phone in the air like an idiot to get service to send the text inside my house.

Wish I could afford a better phone. At least when I was on AT&T with a crappy flip phone, it got good service. As a matter of fact, I've had pre-paid phones with better service than T-Mobile.

I am holding off, until the Ewok phone, is made!

;D

I am holding off, until the Ewok phone, is made!

;D


I'm kind of waiting for the Samsung Skywalker, myself.