Google’s first-born dubbed the Google Phone, gPhone or g-Phone may sport a Linux operating system on a Texas Instrument “Edge” chipset and is likely to available through T-Mobile and Orange in the Spring of 2008, according to unconfirmed reports. Monthly service may even be subsidized by mobile ads.

Furthermore, this big news quietly broke in Singapore, where Jennifer Tan, Reuters subsidiary Anian Research filed a report on July 12. I can’t believe it took nearly four weeks for this news to break wide open!

Tan cited “industry sources,” “U.S. sources,” and “manufacturing and component supply chain sources” in backing her assertion that after year-long delays finding a manufacturer, Google contracted Taiwan-based smartphone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) to design its phone hardware. HTC is best-known for its Windows Mobile smartphones, however, and Tan offered no conjecture about who might supply the phone’s Linux-based operating system.

Additional details reported by Tan include:

* The G-Phone will have a large color screen with a predictive Qwerty keypad to simplify Google searching
* A follow-up 3G-capable model (Edge is considered “2.75G”) will use a Qualcomm chipset
* Scheduled for production in Q1 of 2006, the Google phone will hit retail shelves next spring
* Call minutes and text messages are to be funded by “mobile advertising”
* Google originally hoped to launch a phone this year, but was delayed by “difficulties in nailing down a deal with a handset maker”
* T-Mobile will carrier the phone in the U.S., along with (possibly) Orange in other markets

Obviously, Google isn’t going to comment on this. So we’ll just have to wait for the Google Phone Beta program to start where Google hand out phones to beta testers; similar to the Gmail beta program. Sign me up baby!