"By mid-2007 Google and other Internet giants had convinced the Federal Communications Commission to require that any company that won a January auction for a set of national cellular wireless licenses must allow consumers to use any device and any legal application on that company's network. Furthermore, late in the year Google, along with three dozen partners, unveiled plans to construct an open-source cellular phone platform known as Android."
As noted, things are about to change and with that camcorders, handset interfaces, the ability to run any program, and, most important, gain access to underlying hardware for finding directions, making calls over Wi-Fi, and taking pictures. Android will try and help make this possible as it will allow application developers easy access to the hardware installed on a certain phone which can include GPS chips, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and many other things.
Open phone platforms are the new wave and it can enable easier interaction with remote services that store information. Out of the box, the phone can have amazing capabilities that only some people can install on their phone. The iPhone will allow such access as it uses a version of Apple's Unix-based OX. One thing that could possibly happen is you are making a call while taking notes on the phone.
With an open phone platform, many companies can offer you free or paid services. Currently only your own service provider can offer you services which limits development and can mean higher costs. Everybody knows, more competition means better programs and services plus lower costs.
Big things are about to happen and so I suggest if you are in the market for a phone right now, either hold it off for a year or so or pick a phone with hardware capable of supporting new technology that will be a great asset in the future. A good example is the iPhone or consider a Symbian based Nokia.