Earlier this week, new details came out about the rumoured Google phone.
First up, there was an article in The Boston Globe that indicated that a number of individuals had seen the Google phone. But given that they are all under NDA, they could not say much though. One person described it as simpler and less flashy than the Apple iPhone. Google itself won’t say much beyond confirming that Mobile is an important focus for Google globally and confirming that some Google employees are working on a variety of Google mobile products.
Meanwhile, GigaOM.com has managed to pick up a few details from a reliable source:
- The Google phone will use a mobile variant of Linux and will run Java virtual machines.
- The OS will support multimedia capabilities and applications will all be written in Java.
- The user interface will be typical of mobile phones.
- The built-in web browser will come with pan-and-browse capabilities. It is either written in Java or based on the WebKit core (which is also used in the Apple Safari browser).
- While there was originally one prototype hardware device, this has grown to at least 3 to 5 over the past few months. All have QWERTY keyboards and most, if not all, have been developed by HTC.
It all remains very promising but also very tentative…