Adding grist to the Google Phone mill comes The Boston Globe, with sneaky news from people who’ve touched - that’s right, kids, touched - Google’s cellphone prototype.  While NDAs have, as ever, scythed out the fun stuff, Om Malik has been digging around and found the following:

• Google currently has between three and five prototypes, mostly reworked HTC handsets (as reported here) with full QWERTY keyboards, and rumours continue that Google has been co-partnering with HTC and carrier Orange in developing the design.  The handset the NDA folks have seen is similar,. apparently, to the T-Mobile Dash
• The underlying core of the gPhone is Linux (no surprise there), and it’s capable of running one or more Java Virtual Machines
• Each application on the cellphone is an individual Java app; the OS is also capable of natively running multimedia clips including video files
• Users shouldn’t expect an outlandish or ground-breaking interface, as the UI is very similar to that in existing cellphones (and the red Google Switch concept is definitely not what should be expected).  The interface as a whole is coded in Java, very responsive and has a prominent ‘Search’ box.
• The web browser has been specially written in Java for the handset and is similar in concept to that running on the iPhone and on Symbian phones, in that it relies on panning, scrolling and zooming.

[via BGR]