No matter what you think of BGR and his iPhone fanaticism, he is 100% correct in everything he says in the blog. For us Android users to believe anything otherwise is to be as delusional as we're accusing him of being. The simple fact of the matter is: Even at 2.1, Android is still in its infancy. If we compared Android to iPhone 2.0, then, yeah, maybe it's acceptable.
Unfortunately, we live in 2010 and the N1 has been preceded by the benchmark iPhone 3Gs. Anything less than that mark would be considered, well, less. Advancing technology beyond the benchmark is the point of innovation. When the DROID came out, it was sort of acceptable that it wouldn't be an iPhone-killer. It was after all, N1's best attempt at dethroning the iPhone from its perch, bringing new user experiences to the Android platform. In that way, there is literally no excuse for the "next big" iteration of Android to be as un-revolutionary as it is now with the N1. Google failed to innovate. In the words of "Office Space," they did just enough not to get fired.
I guess what I am most frustrated with (and ultimately why I empathize with BGR) is that Google didn't allow 2.0 to gain a foothold in order to listen to the community about ways in which to improve it and improve the UI and therefore the UX. Instead, 3 months after the release of the DROID, they release 2.1 as the "next big thing," and what BGR is getting at is: It was NOT the next big thing. The music player is a joke... STILL. The gallery application is a joke. The camera application... still a joke. For a Google staple, you'd think the Gmail interface would be nicer.
In fact, 2.1 was just a small step, but somehow it necessitated whole new hardware?!?
Nothing so far about the UI/UX is improved over 2.0. In fact, many users are still experiencing the same problems they had with the DROID. There was no game changer. It's as if Google hadn't learned anything from 2.0 and DROID. Today, I can't recommend either phone to even my closest friends and I own a DROID! The Android platform is fragmented. The apps are frequently on par or sub-par. So many of them are poor that even the best of them will cause the OS to crash or force close.
I hope for goodness sake that Rubin is right and the N1 brings more development to the platform. And I hope that he knows how to damage control, because manufacturers NOT HTC are furious that Google released this phone. They feel betrayed and placed on a lower rung (a situation that WinMo was careful to avoid). At the moment, Android has a lot of momentum but I feel like it's in a precipitous place, unstable as it were.
I don't normally agree with BGR, but he is 100%, completely correct. The unveiling of the N1 was what opened my eyes, because for a while I was drinking a lot of the Android kool-aid. I wanted to discount WebOS, but until I lived with Android, I didn't realize just how good WebOS was, if only it had better hardware (which the Pre Plus seems to deliver). It's like if Android could take it's openness, combine it with the UI/UX of WebOS and the native mailing/exchange applications of the BB, improve the overall quality of apps by demanding more polish... man, THAT would be a SUPER phone!
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