What’s a good Labor Day without some juicy rumors, right? The Boston Globe, generally accepted as a reliable source of information and news, has run a story about the mysterious handset. The article’s author was fortunate enough to converse with several lucky souls who have come into contact with the handset one way or another. These individuals were not, however, able to reveal any specifics due to one of those pesky NDAs. At the same time, some Google phone fun facts, apparently revealed by a number of “reliable” sources with intimate first hand knowledge of the handset have come to light. Check out the 5 morsels below, courtesy of GigaOm:
- Google Phone is based on a mobile variant of Linux, and is able to run Java Virtual Machines.
- All applications that are supposed to run on the Google Phone are Java apps. The OS has ability to run multimedia files, including video clips.
- The user interface is similar to a UI typical of mobile phones, and the image (with red background) floating around isn’t representative of the Google Phone UI. The entire UI is said to be done in Java and is very responsive. The UI, of course has a “search box.”
- There is a special browser which has pan-and-browse features that are common to modern browsers such as browsers for iPhone and Symbian phones. The entire browser is apparently written in Java.
- Initially there was one prototype, but over past few months Google has the mobile OS running on 3-to-5 devices, most of them likely made by HTC, a mobile phone maker, and all have QWERTY keyboards. The model that folks have seen is very similar to the T-Mobile Dash. Around 3GSM, there were rumors that Google, Orange and HTC were working together on mobile devices.
There ya’ have it. Linux, Java apps, familiar UI, crazy browser, and a HTC-sourced device. Good enough?
