take everything you like about the iphone and remove everything you don't. the public/government could just hire 300 engineers and pay them very good wages to develop and produce a smart phone, but tell them to make it without a profit motive in mind, make it as useful as possible, and that it should be as cheap and reliable as possible. (where as the engineers at google are told make it as profitable as possible, while maintaining enough usability to not hurt sales)