"We want to push social down into every experience on the phone"

Andy Rubin, creator of the original Sidekick, driving force behind Android, and VP of mobile engineering at Google wants you to be able to see your friends photo & current facebook status on the caller ID when he calls.

That's one of the things the company's pushing as the launch of the next Andriod phone, the myTouch 3G, approaches in August.

In terms of technological innovation, the biggest steps forward are an enhanced battery life from the G1 and the Voice Search application. According to T-Mobile's site:

Search by voice lets you find what you’re looking for, hands-free. The built-in GPS knows your location. So when you say, “Pizza” you get back your closest pizza places first. Search by Voice also comes in handy to help find long or hard to spell words, like amphitheater.

Over 5,000 applications are available for Android - Contrast that with over 50,000 for the iphone, and it does seem pretty small. However over the long haul there should prove to be more applications available on Anrdoid devices than on Apple ones. Especially given that Andriod is open source and Apple is, well...Apple. Say's Andy:

With Android, there can be 1,000s of different products built, and the magic here is that all those products can be compatible and all of them can be hosted by the same [application] marketplace...it's in an earlier stage of adoption

Other enhancements to Android include a multiple desktop concept which will be familiar to linux users. Another application that looks to figure prominently will be Sherpa a GPS-history app that learns what you do and where you go, and makes search easier.

The phone is available for pre-order now, and hits T-Mobile stores in the US August 5th. It retails for $199.00