Fascinate

The new phone—a Verizon-branded Samsung Galaxy S, AKA Fascinate—is a blast. I've set up ssh, tethering via both wifi and usb, apps to stream media to and from the device, a direct interface to the XDA forums, an alternate app store, a barcode/QR code reader, and Google Goggles, which is just freakin' cool. There's an app which makes light saber noises when you wave the phone around and another which emulates an electric shaver. All of this stuff, ranging from highly productive to delightfully stupid, was free.

I've already started some simple development.  All the development tools are free. Samsung even gives you the source code used to build the kernel.  Most of it, anyway.

Oh! And unlike our AT&T phones, it lets me make phone calls.  To other people!  AT&T was never able to get that bit sorted.  It didn't matter if I was literally standing next to a tower in the middle of an open field at 2 AM; they'd still drop calls.

On the down side, there's still a bit of Microsoft lurking in the system due to their alleged half-billion-dollar deal with Verizon. This is unfortunate, as the true power of such a device comes from the integration of different services. The mandatory Bing search integration only gets in the way. But that, after all, is what Microsoft does best. :p

I expect all traces of Bing to be fully removed after the Froyo update (Danielle explained that this is short for "frozen yogurt", something which is apparently known by everyone but myself).  It's sort of difficult to enforce the use of crapware if the end user has the source code.

UPDATE 3/8/2011

Over five months later, people are still speculating about Android 2.2 on the Fascinate.  The Galaxy Tabs in the Verizon store have had it loaded from day one.  Android 2.3, Gingerbread, has been available for a while now.  A 2.3 ROM for the Galaxy S was leaked about a week ago.  There's already a tablet on the market running Android 3.0.  I hope Android can reach relative stability soon; this has got to be a pain for both developers and carriers.

The bad news is, Verizon still doesn't have their act together.  Perhaps they're pulling a Creative Labs:  Why should we give you the software updates you've already paid for when we can charge you for new hardware?  The good news is, the leaked Froyo ROM works fine, it uses Google as the default search instead of Bing, and it still lets me make phone calls.