To make that slightly less cryptic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Trilogy#Recurring_elements

The candles burn out for you; I am free.

Speaking from personal experience with only a month spent with an Android handset, I can definitely vouch that the Epic 4g is at least "open" for the definition that matters to me; the other day I downloaded the newest Fennec beta from Mozilla over 3g. No app store, just downloading a file and running it from the file browser after checking a high-profile box in the settings menu.

That said, the Fennec build was intolerably slow compared to the built-in Chrome browser that "just works", but the above mentioned experience represents a real amount of freedom your average iOS user doesn't get... if I am given any working Android executable, I can run it. It might not run well because of said "fragmentation", but Jobs isn't putting his hand on my forehead and saying "no", either.

Oops. I was thinking of the iPad. :-(

The Epic 4g has the same processor as the iPhone 4, a 1-GHz ARM Cortex A8. It has a newer GPU, the PowerVR SGX 540 as opposed to the 535 in the iPhone. It also has 512mB of RAM instead of the 256 in the iPhone. It has a few other advantages, like the Super AMOLED screen, which I can attest is absurdly high in contrast, brightness, saturation, and ... power usage. The iPhone 4 in comparison has a 60% higher rez screen, is smaller, and runs iOS, which at present is definitely still an advantage. For me it came down to the fantastic deal that Sprint's bottom of the line plan for smartphone users offers. Also, post-patch about a week ago, the 3g speeds are noticeably faster than that chart suggests, which is good because 4g is worthless in heavy brick buildings, basements, and while moving. It's also worth noting that in a month, it hasn't dropped a single call. >.>