The gPhone is alive and well according to info received by the FCC. It looks like there will be at least one gPhone available for the Xmas holidays.

But the Android development is going slow compared to where you think it would be at all this time after its initial launch. There also seems to be little uptick from the most important pieces of the cell phone market. No, not the end customer like me and you. The most important pieces are the gatekeepers to the kingdoms, the carrriers and their serfs, the cell phone companies.

Android seems to be feeling the lack of love for its new technology. So they have decided to do some more hiring to fix some of the perceived weaknesses most often sited in mobile operating systems, hardware user interface design, battery life and RF issues. You can read all about these new jobs at Google.

This lack of love also extends to the third party software developers that Google managed to distance by providing updates to the Android software only to a select few in their competition. To quote the statement from Google,

We wanted to limit the challenges developers face with an early release in a particularly critical time during the challenge to not disadvantage them. We’ve separated the scheduled releases to not disadvantage these winners who are competing for money, and the public will receive a release of the SDK soon with more documentation and tools.

What Google seems to forget is that many of the third part developers are not just writing code for fun. Many are planning to make money off their applications. For them, not getting the latest releases as they are available could cost them money.