Ok, let's get this straight: Android is not a phone. It is not equivalent to the iPhone or the Blackberry. Technically, Android is an operating system, but the true life of Android (as ironic or contradictory as that may sound) is as a community.
Co-creation. We've all heard that buzzword a lot. What has developed with the Android open-source mobile environment is on-going co-creation of significant technology. Home brewed computer operating systems are no longer just for role-playing geeks sleeping in in a comic store basement.
In the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of One+, I did a little profile of Android-enthusiast and coder Steve Kondik. At the time, he and his team of wild, geographically dispersed volunteers were celebrating the fact that 250,000 people worldwide were using their free, customized Android operating system called CyanogenMod, and 1,000 additional users were downloading it each day.
What a different three months makes: The beta version of their latest operating system, CM7, was just released and saw more than 150,000 downloads in less than 24 hours!