I think it is mainly the battery life issues that stopped Apple from doing A2DP. Enabling the Bluetooth headset for regular phone calls already eats a large amount of the available power.

Hey guys, it's been a long time! Reading up on phones, I just KNEW you guys would be having an intelligent conversation over here!

I have read that Android can support multi-touch, but hardware developers will need to come up with their own drivers first.

I too was a little unimpressed with the G1. Maybe my hopes were too high? I'd like to see what it looks like by January however once the 3rd party stuff starts catching up.

I can't comment on multi-touch, I really don't know the design/business issues there.

The G1 is a first of the type, and there's a lot of hype around it.

The thing I see with the Android stuff is this.. It's not going to convert iPhone users, there is too much bling and brand loyalty there. Android will do much more than the iPhone simply because it's not going to be tied to one company.

Or one phone, of course.

Again, I'd make a distinction between phone and platform. The G1 will probably do absolutely nothing to iPhone sales, but I think that in the long run, Android might be able to.

Overall, I'm disappointed with the first hardware, but the software would be so absolutely helpful to me I'm very nearly tempted to buy the $400 unlocked phone if/when it comes out. If the hardware were slightly better (mostly the issue of ports), it would be enough to get my money.

I cannot wait until we see the first batch of Android phones...

A2DP quality is just not high enough for that to be realistic.

In theory, it can be high-quality if both ends negotiate direct MP3 or AAC streaming. It's only if that negotiation fails (or if it can't make the bitrate) that it falls back to the lower-quality SBC codec. I don't know whether anything in the real world actually implements that part of the spec, though.

Peter

Oops... link.

Seems spyware/adware/trojans are a problem with the G1 marketplace, so be careful what you download:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5138822/rogue-android-app-allegedly-destroying-g1-memory-installing-adware

Thanks for the heads up. I'd actually downloaded that app weeks ago. It's been there for a long time. Nothing happened to my phone, though... *knock on wood*