[Deslock]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg

It looks pretty sweet to me. Frankly, I've given up on Microsoft and Palm fixing their PDA/smartphone OSes. WinCE is unreliable and cumbersome on anything other than dedicated devices (GPSs, etc). It took years just for the hardware to advance to the point that CE could run with reasonable performance and it's still sluggish compared to other OSes. More to the point, it still has many long standing issues. PalmOS is just as bad once you try to browse the web and play media and with their new OS not coming out until 2009, they're out of the picture. Symbian has its own problems as well.

The iPhone is very slick and reliable; the usability of its interface blows away the competition. However, Apple's OSX-mobile is still closed and we won't know until February what their SDK will allow for. So at this point their platform is severely handicapped (though it's still an effective tool for most things while being a lot of fun to use... it really calls attention to just how crappy the interfaces on other PMP/web/cell-phones are).

Open Moko never struck me as something that had legs. Nokia's N770/800/810 are quite interesting, but without decent video playback or cell access, they're not suitable as an all-in-one device.

It's too early to tell if Google's Android will take off, but my impression of what I've seen so far is very positive. If HTC (or someone else) builds an one with a capacitance touch screen, it could offer the main advantages of the iPhone without its weaknesses. I know this is a Microsoft cheerleading site, but it seems a little silly to be so dismissive of Android.

P.S. Just so I'm not accused of being anti-Microsoft, the touch-pad and interfaces on the new Zunes are quite nice.