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Shake the phone to pick a new random song, rotate to landscape to change the view to view by album art.

Try remapping those features to different inputs. This is where the Iphone falls down, it has to be hacked just to allow the user to create a custom wall paper. Android allows the entire UI to be replaced, not just having a new skin put on but all the inputs changed as well. This is what HTC is doing with Sense (project named Rosie) on the HTC Hero.

The Iphone may be the favoured tool of today but a popularity contest is a fickle mistress and will turn on all in the end. The iphone cannot compete on function with Symbian or Android as they are, both are improving platforms. WinMo is slowly dying IMO and it should be. The image of the iphone will not keep it alive in the long run.

The HTC Dream and HTC Magic are faster then the iphone in all tests, what the iphone does is replaces transitions with animations, this is why it appeared faster. to get android to open a web page or even a text file is faster then on the iphone.

Yes you can buy a dev kit and that is as close as your going to get, because mobile carriers do not want you flashing your own device.

They don't get a say in it. There are already several community Android ROMs which are completely outside the control of telco's. I prefer to use JesusFreke's ADP ROM, mundanes will prefer the US or UK localised variants but I like the tools provided in the ADP version. Telco's in Australia (where I live) and Europe are not permitted to tell users what they can and cant do with their phones.

However, I demo'd a bunch of phones, including the G1, then decided on the iPhone. In my opinion it is simply the best device out there, and with the jailbreak, its nears perfection. The HTC Dream is a step in the right direction but the it is clunkier, has worse battery life (not "close to" the iPhone by any means) and the screen is plastic. The glass iPhone screen feels so great to the hand. It's so hard to go back. I read the reviews on the new Android phone coming out July/August, and they said the on-screen keyboard felt tacky and wasn't as nice as Apples due the the plastic screen. The latest Google device will have no pull out keyboard. Also, the G1 is slower, and I feel was rushed to market. It design is not as elegant.

This is why I believe you to be a fanboy. Sorry but you lay too much lavish praise on the iphone and don't appear to have any experience with other devices. You rely on feelings and definitions like "clunkier" rather then debate the actual merits. BTW, the other Android phone from HTC (called the "Magic", but the "T-Mobile MyTouch 3G" for the yanks) has been out in Europe and Australia for over a month now, it has superior battery life to the iphone due to HTC using a larger battery (the one in the dream is tiny, this I admit).

I'm not a HTC/Android fanboy, the Dream's battery life is terrible but with a few useful tricks (keeping WiFi turned off until I use it, switching to 2G when I don't need data, turning down the screen brightness) it outlasts the iphone's default settings. Android 1.5 increased its default battery life by 20%.

is not on the list. It's JesusFreke's super-special version (this version based on the HTC build). If you've rooted your phone or have the developer root-enabled "ADP" version, you'll definitely want it.

Features include:

* Everything in regular HTC cupcake, plus...
* Netfilter support in the kernel
* multitouch "pinching" support in the browser
* A superuser app for "blessing" other apps to access root stuff
* Support for the apps-to-SD hack
* busybox in the shell (included)
* none of the crappy space-stealing applications bundled by your phone company you never use

Sure you could add all this stuff yourself, but why?

Install at your own risk.

For the truely heinous stuff like that shake a baby to death iPhone app that was in the news lately, existing laws should be brought to bear if applicable.

As far as I know, there aren't any laws that would apply. Nor should there be-- it's a pretty slippery slope from "egad! this is a baby-killing trainer" to "egad! Quake is a Columbine trainer"... ...and honestly, aside from satisfying some darkly twisted sense of humor (although I've seen far worse from Spike and Mike), is anyone REALLY going to confuse an iphone with an actual baby? ...and if they have an real-life psychopathic inclination to shake babies, I'd rather see them work it out on a accelerometer.

Apple has every right to remove it from their store. Which is why I exercised my right and bought a G1. Cupcake is awesome, btw.

Like it's been said before in the comments, it is only the default dev phone firmware that cannot download paid apps. the phone itself is not locked out from downloading.

this firmware for example will allow paid app downloads. http://andblogs.net/2009/02/new-adp1-update-official-with-google-voice-and-more/

google developers DO NOT need to spend more money than the average consumer

I could be mistaken, I haven't tried this, but perhaps this is the firmware colonslash is referring to.

Yes - that's the link. I installed the no device checks version. For those not reading the entire thread, this lets me see paid apps on the Android Market with a developer g1.

I could be mistaken, I haven't tried this, but perhaps this is the firmware colonslash is referring to.