I hate to say it, but handheld application development on Windows Mobile (using VS2005) is actually quite good (comparatively speaking). Deploying and testing to a Windows Mobile handset is seamless and tightly integrated. But thats what you get when you have propriety development environment and mobile platform designed specifically to talk together.
Android is platform and dev environment agnostic which is impressive given how feature rich the API is. And it should be possible to become language agnostic too, if a compiler can be created to compile code down to the native Dalvik byte code used by the Android VM.
I think Google needs to get on the ball and create compilers for other languages if they expect to attract developers who really matter - hackers.
That have hundreds, if not thousands, of devices per installation, purchased over the course of years.
We found that limiting ourselves to a very small subset of the available devices on the market was the only way to manage. Otherwise the support staff was awash in calls from physicians running into issues with their new, whizzy phone.
I feel that is Windows Mobile's biggest problem: you end up programming to a handset.
Android is platform and dev environment agnostic which is impressive given how feature rich the API is. And it should be possible to become language agnostic too, if a compiler can be created to compile code down to the native Dalvik byte code used by the Android VM.
I think Google needs to get on the ball and create compilers for other languages if they expect to attract developers who really matter - hackers.