As a hiring manager I find preconceived code samples worthless. There is only one way to know if someone can code during an interview, and that is to pair program with him/her.

I use a technique I learned from Rob Mee at Pivotal Labs. I spend roughly an hour test driving a simple project with the interviewee that Rob specifically crafted to determine the capabilities of the candidate, from the basic level of competency up to that Rockstar ability to spot the elegant solution intuitively.

During an hour of pairing with someone you get a good idea of what they can do, much better than you can from reading pre-fabricated code samples or merely asking quiz questions (whether about stuff someone can memorize from a book or silly brain teasers).

Exactly. Put Android on a pure touchscreen phone and the *best* you can hope for is mobile BeOS.