Fantastic article. What it needs now is costs attached. If a 500MHz ARM 11 is too slow then Android will never make it into the volume market which is only just moving from 50MHz ARM7s to 100MHz ARM9s. Android also needs an MMU and graphics accelerator. That's before you add really expensive bits like a touch screen and camera. I guess an Android phone costs north of $250, built boxed and tested. ZTE will sell you a basic GSM talk and text phone for $25.

It of course makes a nonsense of using Android because it's free, there are so many other costs the $2.50 Symbian used to charge before becoming a foundation is irrelevant.

Simon

It's not the first time Nokia has had a phone without a number. That's just a line to say "look how receptive we are to the US market".

The Nokia RingGo was launched in 1997

http://press.nokia.com/PR/199702/775541_5.html

Please keep up at the back

Simon

Adding an IMEI might mean paying the IPR to the GSM patent holders.

The Cat Keynes website claims that this kind of union is just what Google needs to do to protect Google from Nokia:

http://www.catkeynes.com/CS00013.html

This was The Register's take on who should do it..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/09/cat_keynes_motorola/