Still young and with plenty of development to come, Android OS for smartphones is a serious rival to the established trio of RIM, iPhone OS and Symbian. I have enjoyed my time with my Android device, and here are 5 reasons why you should fall in love with Android this year.

1. Limitless Potential: with the brainiacs at Google’s Android division working furiously to develop the OS, and manufacturers like Motorola and HTC providing improved user experiences via Motoblur and Sense UI respectively, Android has all the manpower and talent behind it.

2. Increased Competition + Price Wars = You Win: in 2010, there will be dozens of new phones from LG, Samsung, Sony, HTC, Motorola, and other makers. More competition means better products and lower prices.

3. Open Source: unlike Symbian (which is about to be opened up) and iPhone OS, Android is free. Most applications are free, and the community support for the operating system is enormous already. There are numerous ROMs and themes for personal customization. Motorola’s Devour has Flash Lite, and Flash 10.1 is imminent for all Android phones, which can multitask.

4. Choices Galore: Nokia has lots of offerings, but Apple has only one, and Blackberrys are limited by their minuscule touchless screens (except for the one Blackberry that few Blackberry users actually want), whereas Android smartphones will explode to almost innumerable choices. You can have AMOLED, 1GHz processors, 854 x 480 screens, QWERTY keypads, multi-touch, slim, thick, big, small, cheap, expensive, plastic, aluminum, etc. No other OS will offer this much hardware.

5. Any Carrier: once AT&T gets its first Android handheld, every major North American and European carrier will feature at least one Android smartphone. In the States, the iPhone is still GSM and AT&T only. Do not be tied to a carrier that you do not want.