Jamie hit me up with this interesting presentation on Rethinking the Mobile Web from Yiibu. The basic idea is that there are a ton of mobile devices out there - iPhone and Android not exactly dominating the pile - and they are being neglected a proper mobile experience because their browsers don't get recognized as legitimately mobile. So, Yiibu suggests building all sites with the mobile style as the base - the foundation - and extrapolating your full iPhone / Android / desktop styles with media query includes. It's basically entirely backwards from the way everyone is doing it now but that doesn't mean it isn't an idea worth considering. Starting with your lowest common denominator means you're reaching a larger audience, no?

Part of me wants to say that this feels a whole lot like designing for IE6 and will, ultimately, hold back the progress of the mobile web. However, I can't really say that when the notion is to keep building layers of your site from the most basic upwards. Can't argue with that.