I code Android apps in my spare time. So basically I've got zero cost. Each of my apps has at least 3 competitors, which seem to be coded by people like me. Granted, many of my competitor's apps look like crap, but they work and provide a valuable service. Most people aren't going to pay top dollar for teh shiny - they are going to buy the cheapest thing that works. So I don't envision ever being able to charge a lot for my apps. I also don't see professional development shops being able to compete with zero cost hobbyists.

The apps are free because the Android market is in beta, and the payment system has not yet been activated. If I wanted to charge for the two apps I have in the Market right now I couldn't.

I don't know about whatever iPhone counterparts might exist for my apps, but they do what they do very well.

My apps run fine in the emulator at 320x480, no crashes.

Here is the deal, at 320x240, I go from 480 vertical pixels to 240. Ouch. Now I guess you could force the people who bought this new POS android phone to flip their phone sideways so that my app has 320 pixels - still quite a crunch - and have fun typing on this phone sideways.

But regardless, supporting such low resolution will take some doing on my part, and require me to maintain separate layouts, and possibly different code paths that reduce functionality or make other compromises. And at some point there are just some things that can't reasonably be done in half the screen real estate. I am likely not going to take the time to support such low screen resolutions in my apps.

I've developed two successful apps. One somewhat successful, one very successful. The most successful one is the most resolution independent. In coding it, I've done nothing that depends on any particular resolution. It randomly crashes in the emulator using QVGA (the resolution of the Aussie google phone). Even if it didn't crash, several of the screens are next to useless in the lower resolution, there is simply not enough space without recoding them.

Now, I could recode my app to use smaller fonts, lower the width/height of the UI components - but it would make my app less useful on the G1. Why would I want to do such a thing?

That's all well and good until I have to fit a certain amount of data on the screen. If I've designed for a larger screen, it's simply not going to fit, however flexible the layout.

Now I could design for the lowest possible screen resolution, but that will limit functionality or force me to produce a UI that's artificially small on larger screens.

Even the studious developers will have a lot of work to do making their apps work properly at lower resolutions.

It is sometimes *really* hard to make apps that work at all resolutions when you don't have much screen real estate. One of my apps will break horribly on this new screen layout, and I am not sure how to fix it. The other should work ok, but it won't be as usable, and will limit the amount of functionality. Detecting all this will be an utter nightmare.

My guess is that many of the android market apps will not work properly on this new phone.

This is what I like about the iPhone - there is *one* resolution and two orientations - that's it.