The minimum specs they announced for Android One are surprisingly good. I think this effort will do for phones what the Raspberry Pi did for embedded systems: In the blink of an eye, the mobile industry will have to deliver much more capability for much less cost, or they’ll lose business to the low-cost offerings. This has already happened in the embedded system industry, in that any “PC board” that costs more than the Pi must set itself apart somehow, either in terms of performance or capability.

They’ve also done a great service for developers. While it’s always been possible to start developing Android apps using just the emulators (as I did in early 2009), some things are easier to test on real hardware. Well, the cost of real hardware just dropped from $350 (Nexus line) to $105.