Google Phone

If you’re going to pull in 30+ companies and unite them under your OHA banner, you need a swish demo handset to first wow them; according to Forbes, the device that did all that coercing is called the Dream and it’s a custom design from HTC for Google’s demo stable.  Rumor has it, though, that HTC are considering a commercial version of the cellphone for release in the second half of 2008, with CEO Peter Chou (somewhat narcissistically) calling the concept “the best one we’ve seen.”

Similar in appearance to the iPhone, while no images of the Dream exist outside of Google and HTC’s corridors it’s apparently a side-swivelling, thin device approximately 3-inches wide and 5-inches long with a rectangular touchscreen.  Screen orientation flips from portrait to horizontal when you open the full QWERTY keyboard out, and they’ve added interesting time-sensitive functionality to the UI so that when you hold your finger down the area you’re selecting expands.  That could open up a palette of context-sensitive tools, or simply make navigation with a blunt fingertip more precise.

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Suggestions that HTC have one or more Android-based Google cellphones already waiting in the wings have been percolating for months now, and so Google-Phone’s Vincent Nguyen spoke to the handset manufacturer to see just what affect the open-source OS might have on their range.  Key among HTC’s concerns was that Windows Mobile - the OS that currently powers the majority of handsets available either under their own name or with operator branding - has not been ousted by Android.  Instead, models based upon both platforms will be available, and while we couldn’t get HTC to elaborate on specific details for their Android model(s) they confirmed that it would be a heavily data-centric device designed to fully leverage Google’s suite of web-enabled applications.

Further indication of future Android cellphone development comes from the presence of Synaptics, cryptically listed in the Open Handset Alliance member directory as supplying ”a variety of user input solutions for mobile devices”.  Our sister-site, SlashGear, scored an exclusive hands-on late last year with one of Synaptics concept devices, the Onyx, which at the time was rumoured to form the basis of Apple’s iPhone.  Instead, Apple went with a relatively home-grown model and Synaptics licenced their multiple-touch-sensitive capacitive display to rivals such as LG for use in their Prada cellphone and, more recently, in Samsung’s F700 “Croix”.

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Android is the open platform for mobile devices that the OHA are in the works of developing. The Open Handset Alliance or OHA is a group of mobile companies including Google, T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, and Motorola, together they are working to make the mobile handset market more open.

There are several other members of the alliance you might recognize such as LG, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sprint, Ebay, Broadcom, Intel, nVidia, SIRF (the GPS chipset guys), Synaptics, and TI, there are several more, those are just the ones that I readily recognized. A large portion of the ones not mentioned are international cellular providers, mobile device GUI makers, and other firms with experience in bringing service, hardware, or software components to the mobile device market.

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Someone, somewhere, just wound up a big spring in Google: if the Wall Street Journal are to be believed then within the next two weeks we’ll be hearing an announcement about a Google-developed suite of software and services which manufacturers can use to release Google Phones.  While spokespeople from the search giant declined to comment, sources close to them revealed that deals are likely to include LG and HTC, while involved carriers mentioned were T-Mobile USA, France’s Orange and the UK’s 3 network. 

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That Google and HTC have been in bed with each otherover the development of pre-production gPhone handsets is nothing new; what does come as a surprise is that, according to analysts at UBS, the manufacturer will ship an estimated 50,000 handsets using their own hardware design and Google’s new cellphone OS by the end of the year.  Intended for developers, who will undoubtedly be keen to figure out how to best code for what’s believed to be a Linux-based environment, it does herald the availability of a production version that should appear in stores sometime 2008.

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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]

Just days after we highlighted the parallels between Google’s incipient cellphone strategy and the niche carved out by Sidekick-sires Danger, the net is abuzz with semi-substantiated news that Google will not only be launching its own Google phone OS sometime around the Labor Day weekend, but also partnering with HTC to develop one model from its lineup as a flagship poster-device.

Engadget spills the juicy software details: according to their sources development of the gPhone OS (that’s not the official name, of course) started shortly after Google acquired Android, a mobile software company run by ex-Danger-cofounder Andy Rubin, in 2005. Based on Linux, the OS has apparently been whored around the hardware manufacturers and carriers to promote the idea of a flexible and customisable system with Google integration as one of its strong points.

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