The current trend in Android devices, including with T-Mobile, is “we HAVE to get a keyboard-less device!!!” They’re saying here “tablet”, not “netbook”, or something along those lines. And … completely keyboardless would be a problem for me.

If it has USB keyboard/mouse support, and Bluetooth keyboard/mouse support, then that would be “acceptable”, but not ideal. But if it doesn’t even do those (aka “iPhone”), then I wont touch it. (no pun intended)

The Pepperpad is too big though. And isn’t its screen bigger than 7″? A 7″ version of the Pepperpad is … a Samsung Q1 Ultra, basically (different internals, yes, but I’m talking about the format of the device). A 7″ device that’s of a similar format to the Q1 Ultra and Pepperpad, similar size to the Q1 Ultra, with an ARM cpu, and Android? … oh yeah, I’d be all over that*.

(* assuming my #1-3 above are addressed, and hopefully #’s 4 and 5 too)

There aren’t any apps I would want to do with a netbook/UMPC/MID that I can’t do on my G1 … the question isn’t “can I do X”, it’s “how well can I do X”:

1) Gmail doesn’t do “send as” for my other email personalities, allow me to add/edit filters, nor create new labels

2) Google Reader doesn’t support keyboard shortcuts, adding/editing tags, nor adding/editing subscriptions

3) Google Docs is read only, and only for some formats

4) I haven’t come across an IM client as fully featured as Pidgin. The built in one only lets you have one active IM account at a time (not “one per service/protocol”, but “one at all”), doesn’t let you have more than one Google Talk account, and doesn’t recognize Jabber/XMPP services other than Google Talk. I would want to have more services/protocols, other Jabber/XMPP services, multiple Google Talk identities, and the ability to be logged in to ALL of my IM accounts at once (even multiple identities on the same service/protocol).

5) I love the ssh client (ConnectBot), but haven’t been able to get it to work with the VNC viewer. Not a big deal on my G1 (it would be a novelty), but if I’m running this on a UMPC or Netbook, this will become more of a necessity.

Those things don’t require retooling the OS. The first 3 are, I suspect, because the browser on the G1 identifies itself as a mobile browser. If you were to get a browser on Android that identified itself as a desktop browser, those behaviors would probably all be acceptable. The 4th one is clearly just a matter of application development — and I haven’t tried any of the 3rd party apps to see if they do a better job in the IM arena. The last one: purely a matter of coordination by 3rd party developers.

What things, other than opening up a command line shell (which you can’t do on all desktop OSes either), what can’t you do on Android that is the fault of the OS and not the application ecosystem? (and, before you say anything about screen size, Android has already been run on a netbook, with the larger screen and higher pixel count; so THAT complaint is completely off the table)

New article: NYTimes: T-Mobile USA working on 7″, Android-based ‘Tablet’ http://cli.gs/1RbJSJ