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March 16, 2007

At this time, it isn’t quite clear if Google will seek to partner with an existing handset maker. There is now speculation that a Google/Samsung phone venture could be in the works soon.

Of course, if some people need another "mythical cell phone" to drool over and speculate about, the so-called GooglePhone could 'possibly' be a reality soon, at least some believe...

While Google has been making inroads on mobile handsets with cell phone versions of its search, email and mapping software for some time, lately there has been some speculation that the company is working on its own hardware.

The latest G-Phone morsels to hit come courtesy of Simeon Simeonov (no relation to the deceased Bulgarian soccer player) and his HighContrast blog, whose always-reliable "inside source" broke down some of the anticipated specs.

According to Simeonov's tipster, we can expect a Blackberry-like device running Java on a C++ core with perhaps a Linux operating system.

For graphics, Google is said to be leveraging its 2005 acquisition of a little known company named Skia that develops a 2-D graphics engine capable of rendering so-called state-of-the-art images on low-power devices.

Google is said to be offering wireless carriers a deal where the search giant will sell and market the phone online, relying on the carriers for their networks only and subsequently driving down their costs.

Combined with Google's tradition of offering almost everything for free, there's a good chance that you'll be able to pick up your G-Phone for much less than an iPhone.

Of course, lets hope that in the tradeoff we aren't being forced to listen to ads every time we want to make a call...

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Source: EnGadget Mobile