[markomalley]

I take it Apple is getting ready to open it up to another provider and AT&T wants to make it more painful to jump ship. I heard they are working on a Verizon version.

That's nice thing #286 about Android. Being an open source OS, there are more than one hardware vendor that supports it and you can go to any carrier.

Steve Jobs' snarkiness aside.

[Terpfen]

That's nice thing #286 about Android. Being an open source OS, there are more than one hardware vendor that supports it and you can go to any carrier.

Which isn't actually much of an advantage, since it just means you've got to decide between unequal feature sets. Dirty secret about most Android phones: since Google allows extensive alteration of the core OS, updates are held hostage by carrier-manufacturer cooperation. Both have to get on the same page to issue an update, even basic security patches.

Right now, Android updates are overwhelmingly distributed not by downloading the new version to currently-in-use phones, but by sales of new phones with the updates pre-loaded. Most people actually are still using the same version of Android their phone came with.

Competition is good, but Android seems to shoot itself in the foot more often than it aims the gun at Apple.