[TurboFool]

I have to agree with you. I wasn't sure where you were going at first, but you're absolutely right. Windows Mobile is drastically far behind, which is very unfortunate. Microsoft tends to react to something that's out there by first releasing a poor competitor, updating it with a passable competitor, and then surpassing it and taking over the market, but as soon as they kill the competition (let's face it, Palm's been DOA for a while now), they grow stagnant and have trouble repeating their previous success when a new challenger arrives. This happened with IE (IE7 was too little, too late), and so far it's happened with Windows Mobile.

I have hopes for them. I really do. The overall possibilities of WM are strong, and a good version of it that takes into account the design lessons being taught by the competitors is exciting. But for the moment they're been drastically outclassed by the iPhone, despite its major deal-breaking shortcomings. Nobody can put their hands on an iPhone for five minutes and not be impressed by its sheer usability and clean, [relatively] reliable interface. Now use it exclusively for a bit more than five minutes and, if you're like me, the limitations start rearing their ugly heads, but still, if Apple manages to iron those out (although a few will never be improved on because they're just Apple concepts), the iPhone will kill. Microsoft has a lot of work to do to respond to this and I'm not sure it's in them any time soon.

But yes, Android does have this potential. Google has already taken over a lot of aspects of my life that were once run by Microsoft, and I'm far more willing to trust them than Apple. They seem to grasp both the needs for clean, simple, responsive designs while still providing genuine functionality, extensibility, personalization, open standards, and more. Android seems to me like it has the potential to be what the iPhone could have been if it wasn't made by Apple. If they can get that level of hardware quality (multi-touch and the capacitive touchscreen are important aspects of the iPhone experience) and get enough support for the Android I would consider switching, assuming my MS-exclusive needs (pretty much just access to Office documents and Exchange syncing) are met by it, as well.

As for the possibility of loading Android onto our phones, I doubt this will be impossible. HTC's designing Android hardware, and the whole OS is essentially open source. Google certainly will have no complaints with us doing it and will likely leave it wide open to do so, and since HTC's probably not scrapping their basic design concepts and starting fresh for Android, there should be enough similarities to give the good crackers a foothold to port it. I give it less than a month after Android phones hit the market before someone manages to get a barely-functioning version of Android on a Titan and six months before we can run it smoothly.

Now that having been said, by that point I expect some pretty sweet Android-native phones (details on the Dream are, if accurate, very impressive), so I may be more likely to just take the plunge and buy myself a real Android phone as long as the software's where I need it to be.