The Swype Revolution?
It's tough reviewing an Android phone, as I did in today's column. You're reviewing not just a phone, but also its cell network and, most hopelessly of all in limited space, a huge and complex operating system. — The Droid X is particularly tough to describe concisely.
Context & Ripple Effects
This column lands at the peak of the arc that began with the 2008 argument that Android would soon kick ass and ran through January 2010's Nexus One review and the claim that handset makers now live in Google's world. By mid-2010 Android is no longer a promising upstart but the default platform Motorola builds flagships on — which is precisely what makes Pogue's job harder.
His stated problem is structural, not stylistic: a reviewer of an Android phone is implicitly grading three stacked products — the hardware, the carrier network, and a huge operating system — with room to fully address none of them. The Swype framing matters because gesture typing is one of the few layers where a single handset can differentiate itself from every other phone running the same OS.
First-order effects
- Reviewers covering Android flagships are now forced to triage across network, operating system, and hardware in limited space — the review unit has effectively become a stack, not a device.
- Swype gains its highest-profile test yet: a verdict in a mass-circulation column on a flagship Motorola handset determines whether gesture typing reads as gimmick or revolution.
Second-order effects
- Because Android is shared across manufacturers, input methods and bundled software like Swype become the differentiation battleground between handsets — exactly the dynamic the 'Google's world' reporting predicted when it cast OEMs as tenants on Google's platform.
- Motorola and Verizon get a template for competing on experience rather than spec sheets, pressuring rival Android handset makers to preload or license comparable input innovations.
Third-order effects
- If software-layer differentiators keep deciding flagship comparisons, the Android market consolidates value in whoever owns the touch-and-input experience above the common OS — a shift from 'which phone' to 'whose interface' as the purchase question.
- Tech criticism itself adapts: platform-level products push reviewers toward componentized verdicts (network, OS, skin, input) rather than single-score device reviews.
The trend: As Android commoditizes the handset base, competition migrates up the stack to input and interface layers like Swype, making software experience the axis on which otherwise similar phones are judged.