They do it to me every time. A carrier announces something that I want, and then starts teasing for something a little further down the road. It makes it very hard to be an early adopter, for sure.

Tomorrow, the most powerful Android phone on T-Mobile, the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant will land. Unfortunately, it’s not an HSPA+ capable device, and the rumor is that T-Mo is going to launch their faster networks on July 21, just one week from today. The first phone capable of taking advantage of the new network is rumored to be the HTC Vision…which won’t launch ’til September. And even then, we don’t know the specs of it.

We do know the Vibrant is powerful, and I have handled the beautiful thing. It’s skinny and the screen is big and bright. If I pick one up tomorrow, it won’t be with any great hesitance or regret. I just can’t help but wonder what’s next.

I’ll update with the Samsung Vibrant tomorrow if it’s available in stores. It’s certainly not available as an upgrade on mytmobile.com. It’s been in their database of phones for weeks, but you couldn’t order it.

If I wake up with a headache and it wasn’t the result of drinking the night before, I feel like it was given to me for some cosmic reason. Sort of like Daphne in this early episode of Frasier I happened to catch the other day…she got these psychic headaches whenever somebody nasty was nearby. (In that episode it was Lillith, but I digress.) I feel like there are greater forces at work that are making me take things slow on mornings that I wake up with brain fuzz.

So I woke up with a ripper this morning, and I came downstairs to see that Symbian Guru has abandoned Symbian for Android. Because my head was throbbing, I lingered on this blog entry a bit longer than I normally would, and I realized it was because I had to say something besides “welcome to the platform*.”

I have watched with excitement as my friends and family one by one switch to Android. My brother got the EVO 4G yesterday, my Sister-in-law got the Backflip two weeks ago. My girlfriend, who is terrible at remembering names, has repeatedly brought up the HTC Aria, asking about it and recalling the advertisements shown during the early World Cup 2010 games.

This is not about building a community any more. With 160,000 Android devices being sold per day, this is about being at the right place at the right time.

Ricky says this in his Symbian-Guru farewell post:

While European carriers stumble over themselves to carry the latest Nokia devices, American carriers tend to pick up the lame-duck and low-end versions of Nokia’s phones. This is improving, but at a snail’s pace. Both Symbian and Nokia are dying brands in the U.S., if not already dead, and I’m sick and tired of banging the gong alone.

I spent much of my last month in Europe taking pictures of billboards, noting TV advertisements, and comparing displays in mobile phone shops, and I can say this: Nokia and Sony Ericsson still rule Europe. But HTC is making a huge push there. When I drove into Prague on the 611, I passed by the biggest HTC Android advert I had ever seen plastered on the side of a warehouse. It must have been a football field long.

Furthermore, because of Sony Ericsson and Samsung’s support of Android, the platform is gaining a lot of recognition over there. In the newsstands in Munich, publications like Mobile Zeit and Mobile News all had the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 prominently featured on the cover. It was in display windows all over the place, and there were advertisements for it on walls, on TV, and on the radio.

I keep telling Americans that Sony Ericsson is going to break Android through to the European market, but I don’t know if anyone believes me.

But back to the abandonment of Symbian. With the new top-of-the-line Nokia N8 rocking the first version of Symbian^3 on the way, you’d think that a Symbian enthusiast would be all over it. But Ricky totally nails it:

When the Nokia N8 was first announced, I was dead convinced I would purchase one out of my own pocket. I started putting money aside, ready to even pre-order the N8 as soon as I could. However, the more I use the Nokia N97 as my primary device, the less I’ve been convinced that the N8 is going to be better. Time and time again, Nokia’s high-end smartphones have arrived with pathetic processors, stingy amounts of RAM, and small batteries – why should I put up another $500 of my own money ‘just to see’?

When I reported about the N8 on Betanews, I talked to Nokia about the device’s 680Mhz processor, noting that their absolute top of the line device has a processor only as fast as the current generation of mid-range Android phones.

They said “there are optional ways to achieve great performance” outside of raw processing capabilities.

It kind of upset me that they’d put a freaking 12 megapixel camera into the device, but chose to rely on “options” to deliver a screaming user experience. It just reminded me of the people who put stripped-down Linux distributions on old machines and claim they run just as fast as newer, more powerful machines.

They may be efficient, but why should efficiency only be employed when it’s a necessity?

But I digress. This is not proclaiming the death of Symbian in any way or naming winners and losers in the mobile world. This is just another reminder that one by one, people important to other mobile platforms are becoming Androids.

Android is not perfect. But no technology is, and that’s part of why it’s such a wonderful and exciting field. You get familiar with the limitations of your hardware or software and delight in the workarounds you devise. You learn their strengths and exploit the hell out of them.

That’s what technology is all about, that’s what Android is all about for me.

*Welcome to the platform, by the way.

Well, the rumors are coming in, and they’re not exactly the most positive things. As usual, people are throwing around the same tired-ass fragmentation argument.

Rumor 1.) Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) is due in mid-October, with the first handsets shipping in the Nov/Dec range for the holidays (which sounds like a revisitation of 2.0)
Rumor 2.) Minimum hardware requirements for Android 3.0 devices are: 1GHZ CPU, 512MB or RAM, displays from 3.5″ and higher.
Rumor 3.) A New 1280×760 resolution is available for the devices with displays of 4″ and higher (I keep screaming “convergence,” but I don’t know if anybody is listening…)
Rumor 4.) Completely new 3D-esque UI. This one seems almost logical. Hopefully you will be able to turn off all animations.
Rumor 5.) 3.0 will be for high end devices, and lower-end handsets will keep Android 2.1/2.2

I’m kind of plunging into the Google Services/Buzz/FriendConnect thing, so there’s a widget over there that lets you connect your Google/Twitter/Yahoo/other with this site. If I had anything else to separate with more slashes, I would put it in this sentence.

I’m still waiting for the Archos 7 tester to show up on my doorstep, and I’ve lately been fantasizing about an Android-powered pocket camcorder.

It is so very possible and so very easily done I can’t believe I haven’t found one in Hong Kong yet.

Anyway, more from me later…a look at the Samsung Galaxy S aka Vibrant, some chatting with ZTE about network and consumer hardware, and some more stuff.

According to Adobe today, the following devices will have Flash Player 10.1 (and consequently, the Android 2.2 “Froyo” update if they don’t already:)

Dell Streak
Google Nexus One
HTC EVO 4G
HTC Desire
HTC Incredible
Motorola Droid/Milestone
Samsung Galaxy S

Future devices running Android 2.2 will also support it, of course. My Droid is sitting here with 2.1 just itching to be updated. Of course, I’m also expecting the Archos 7 tablet in the mail for review, and the Creative Vado HD 3rd gen camera so I’m just itching all over.

Wirefly is offering the Cliq XT Titanium for free with a 2-year contract/data plan. Cliq XT has no physical keyboard, LED flash 5 megapixel camera, FM radio tuner, and touch-sensitive trackpad. 3.1″ touchscreen, MotoBLUR (based on Android 1.5), 802.11 Wi-fi, and A2DP Bluetooth. It’s a decent phone that didn’t get a lot of hype. If you know somebody up for upgrade on T-Mo, or somebody looking for a free entry-level smartphone that you’d like to turn onto Android, this is a damn good start.

All the way at the other end of Motorola’s line is the upcoming Droid X. It’s going to be huge in size and power and I’m going to go up to New York next week to get in on the launch event. Bear in mind, they didn’t invite me this time even though I’ve gone to the launch of two other Motorola Android devices this year and Sanjay Jha is my bro. I emailed them today, though…so I should be covering it quite thoroughly when they get back to me. …And with my newfound love for instant YouTube videos, I’ll have tons of hands-on video of it.

The particularly funny thing about the Droid X ad above is that it’s INCORRECT. The Droid X absolutely does not have an HD screen. It can capture HD video, but that’s different.

Android 2.1 with HTC Sense
600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor
512MB ROM/384MB RAM
3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen (320×480)
5-megapixel camera
2GB microSD card included
Dimensions 4.1″ x 2.3″ x .46″
Weight (with battery): 3.8 ounces
Battery: 1200mAh
Quadband EDGE (850/900/1800/1900), dual band HSPA (850/1900)
Digital compass, WiFi, aGPS, HSPA 7.2
Available on June 20, $129.99 after $100 mail-in rebate and 2 year contract.

It kind of reminds me of the HD Mini which didn’t end up coming to the states.  I’ll ping HTC in a minute to see if they’re gonna give out more info.

I talked to Mint.com about their Android App before it was released a couple of weeks ago.  Even though they developed for the iPhone first, they had a lot of positive things to say about Android:  Development is easier, less restrictive, and more community-supported.

After actually launching their app, they have already issued version 1.2 thanks to all the user feedback they got.  In case you missed my review on Betanews, Mint is a personal budgeting app that accesses all your online banking records, investments, and lines of credit and gives you a live snapshot of your finances and where you stand in your budget.  It doesn’t allow transactions to be made, so it’s a bit safer than some of your regular banking apps.

Version 1.2 has 1.2 in response to user feedback.  The new version of Mint for Android allows users to view their financial data in landscape mode, it now works with hardware keyboards (including Shape Writer,) it
enables widget viewing in a 4×1 area, and  offers improved categorization and cleaner refreshing.

Once you get over the initial skepticism of putting all your financial records into Mint, you find that it’s a really handy app.  I find myself using the live folder of my recent transactions very often.  It’s the first time I’ve really put live folders to good use.

I contemplated going to a coffee shop and settting up like this as a part of the review I’m writing. You know, to see what kind of reaction I’d get. I still don’t know if I should or not.