Anyone doing any work on Android, either applications or OS work? I've been really interested in playing with a new OS on my HP iPAQ 210, but Linux support seems tetchy and BSD is non-existent right now. I love programming in .NET Compact Framework, but all of the other applications on Windows Mobile 6 are craaaap.

I've toyed around with it but I don't have a G1, so I can't run most apps available. Most are targeting the G1's HVGA display. My phone has only QVGA.

Developing for Android with the SDK and Eclipse is a pleasure. If you already know Java you can pretty much just install the SDK and Eclipse then you're ready to write your first application. If you don't already know Java it's pretty easy to pick up-- especially if you are familiar with C#. The Android SDK's Eclipse integration is excellent. It is a breeze to set up a new Android project and build and run within the emulator. Google's got a lot of good tutorials already written and I suspect more are in the works as the platform matures. There isn't much else in the way of documentation out there beyond the tutorials. That's to be expected for such a young platform.

The performance of apps written for Android is a little sub par in my experience when run on my HTC Vogue. Handheld devices are getting more and more powerful, but I don't think they're so powerful yet that we have cycles to throw away on running bytecode. Dalvik (Android's VM) doesn't just-in-time compile anything. I don't love C++, but I think the extra complexity is worth getting more out of the hardware.

For my next phone I'm on the fence. I could go with Android or the next Windows Mobile. With WM7 and Microsoft's app store on the horizon things could get really interesting in the mobile games market. Not owning a Mac has been the only barrier of entry for me into iPhone development. I can already write apps for Windows Mobile with Visual Studio 2008, SharpDevelop or the ancient (but free) Microsoft Embedded VC++.

I know Java, but after years of working in C# and .NET, Java's design philosophy starts to annoy me. I think I might actually rather do C++ than Java.

I have no idea if Android will run on my PDA. I got it because it actually has a full VGA display, 480x640, which is just about the largest you can find on a handheld device (if you know of larger, let me know, I use it as a portable art gallery). With both CF and SD card slots, I've got about 12GB of storage right now, and can expand it to 64GB. This thing also supposedly is capable of hosting USB devices, which would be really cool if I could find a full keyboard. 802/11g wifi and bluetooth round out the set to make for a very nicely featured device crippled by an old, old operating system. If WM6.5 is any indication, then WM7 will have to be a complete, from-the-ground-up rewrite to bring anything new to WinCE.

Supporting the screen is the #1 concern for me. Like I said, it's my portable image gallery. I have iPhone user friends who are jealous of my screen. I just wish WM was better at using the screen real estate. It's really designed for QVGA, and it just doesn't scale.

The HTC Blackstone/Touch HD has a larger screen (800x480). It runs Windows Mobile as well. It's not for everybody though, and it's not CDMA or 3G in the US. There's also the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 (also 800x480).

I've started a post here for anyone interested in discussing a gaming platform for Android:

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=527334