Hey Andy. The 1970's called. They want their phone back.

It's quite a bit of hubris to enforce your views on your customers, rather than having your customers lead your product.

I guess I'll just have to get an iPhone then...

he is not interested in turning Android devices into personal assistants.

What a raging nitwit

We, the customer, don't really care what HE'S interested in doing, only what WE want done!

I hope someone fires him before he screws up Android

It's all rhetoric.

This guy hasn't noticed Google Voice? That's definitely talking to your phone. The phone doesn't talk back much now, but any developer or manufacturer could make that happen.

Andy Rubin's statements haven't stopped Android from making progress in the past. He was saying he didn't like pinch and zoom; that didn't stop Android from embracing it. There was a delay, but the real reason was Apple's patents, and Google has since decided just to let Android Manufacturers get sued.

Steve Jobs also said noone would ever want a 7 inch tablet. Many experts, though, believe you will see an iPad mini in spring.

"You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone."

Perhaps in the 1970s, yes.

But nowadays, talking with another person on the phone is a small percentage of the time spent on smartphones. People do spend a lot of time communicating with their phones - they've got touchscreens, keyboards, and buttons. It remains to be seen how much they will want to use voice, but they definitely communicate with the phone.

It's not a phone. Not anymore. In fact it's a running joke at my house when I ask my kids, hey, did you know that your text machine works as a phone too?

yeah, I know, nobody finds that very funny here either.

But for young kids, it's not a phone, it's a texting machine. Or a way to watch youtube. And for me, it's a navigatin device and information retreival. I use my phone fairly routinely now to get directions to stores, or look up hours, etc. I'll say 'restaurants {local area}' and have it find us some place to eat. What's that got to do with a phone?

And I'm an antique, I still actually use my phone as a phone. I don't believe my kids ever use their phone for phone calls.

I don't get the story from him at all.

I used to use a PDA to help organize my life. Now, I use my smartphone as a PDA. Oh, and a phone, too, of course.

I estimate that using my "phone" to communicate with somebody else is less than 5% of total usage time. For me my smartphone is a mini computer that accidently has a built in telephone.