Here we go again. The hypemeisters are in full swing, the prediction market is growing again - glory be, Android is coming to a phone near you tomorrow, or at least it's going to do so if you live in America. The launch is in New York, America will get the phone in October and in the UK we'll get it in November (by the way, if you guys could find all the bugs and all like you did with the iPhone so we can get a clean machine...thanks).

So, what would people want from an Android phone? The answer seemed reasonably clear until a few months ago - an affordable iPhone lookalike. The problem with that at the moment is that the iPhone has itself turned extremely affordable, free on contract on some terms in the UK. There have been remarkably few glitches with the iPhone of late - with Apple correcting a number of the faults like dropped calls before they become a massive issue.

So my guess is that whatever Android offers, and no matter how much Open Source is going to be a selling point for we geeks, it just better look good like an iPhone or nobody's going to be interested in the thing. Because no matter what people have said about the iPhone technically, no matter how good a piece of engineering it is, what's really catching people's eye is the look and feel.

Over to HTC tomorrow...