But until now, it offered little detail on how much mobile ads and Android, which it gives handset manufacturers free, contribute to revenue.
By pushing the price of a mobile phone OS to zero in 2008, Google gave handset manufacturers a huge incentive to use its software - even previous Windows Mobile stalwarts such as HTC.
You can view listings by model, carrier, and tell at a glance if any given handset is rooted, running a modified ROM, what kind of shape it's in and whether or not it comes with any accessories.
There's still no word as to when we can expect it to drop onto devices, nor are they making promises that any specific feature will make it on to any given handset (be it the G1 or a future release) – but with the Cupcake branch at a reasonably stable point and beginning to show some of its new tricks, we thought we'd do a video run-through of what has made it in so far.
Intense competition has shortened product lifetimes to six or nine months, giving handset-makers less time to ramp up volumes and exploit their most popular models before fashion moves on.Nokia's response to all of this is to exploit its unrivalled scale, which allows it to operate on a completely different model from the rest of the industry.
Working with Google could also give the handset makers better leverage with Japan's powerful domestic network operators: NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank.
This is how Ekuwa Atteh living in Sawayiti, a remote village in eastern Ghana, used to recharge her mobile phone: give the handset to someone in the village with a kerosene-run generator, pay a bush taxi driver who would bring it back charged after a day or two, or make a day trip to a nearby town herself.
Tango uses the 3D cameras embedded in Google's latest smartphones to give the handset a human-scale understanding of space and motion.
With BeoCom 5, you can select colour patterns for display information to give each handset a unique appearance, perhaps matching the décor of each room.
At 7.5 millimeters, it's not much thicker than a lot of the competition, but a blocky design and a weighty metal build give the handset an added sense of bulk that's hard to shake.
