From rumours to sightings, the Google Phone gets more real
You can forget the rumours and speculation. If you needed any more damning evidence that the Google Phone is real, you can take Mark Wilson of Gizmodo’s word for it. It isn’t a Photoshop job, an aspiring design student’s artist render. This is according to a very trusted source, who has seen the phone with his own eyes, so it exists.
Techrunch called it first; we had covered this story a couple of weeks ago, it is a ‘walled garden’ project from Google, and they’re going to take the Android OS and try and fulfill its potential in ways that Android phones haven’t.
We don’t know how handset manufacturers supporting the Android platform are going to react to this move from Google, it is similar to how Microsoft licensed the Playforsure platform to MP3 player manufacturers, only to pull the rug under them by launching the Zune.
Gizmodo and Techcrunch have also made speculations that this handset will support Google Voice, and will be a data/VoIP only phone, which promises to turn the telecom industry upside down.
An appended list of what we know about the Google phone until now:
1. Google is making a phone. No, not with HTC, not the Motorola Droid, and not anything remotely to do with a partner. This will be a Google phone in the purest sense of the word – Google branding, Google design, etc.
2. A reputed phone manufacturer will be involved, but only in the process of actually making the physical device and nothing more. Again, this is a ‘Google Phone’, out and out.
3. It is set to come out early next year.
4) It will have large LCD screen running a custom version of the Android OS, and no, this doesn’t have anything to do with the Chrome OS.