Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and it’s here where comparisons to the iPhone are also inevitable. On the one hand Google wants us to believe that Android isn’t a direct response to Apple’s own offering (which, chronologically, may well be true), but at the same time is keen to remind developers that in contrast to the iPhone they won’t need to get Android applications certified by anyone, nor will there be any hidden APIs (application programming interfaces) accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators — another dig at Apple.

What Google is less keen to highlight, however, is how Android’s openness could potentially lead to the platform becoming fragmented, resulting in a mishmash of incompatible flavors or implementations. That’s because, notes The Register, Google plans on open sourcing Android “under a freewheelin’ Apache license” in which carriers and handset makers will be able to make any modifications they like. These could be as innocuous as cosmetic changes to the UI, such as replacing icons with the networks’ own branding, to something more significant like swapping which default applications and services are installed, including the option to remove Google’s own wares and, say, replace them with Yahoo’s or a carrier’s own.