One thing which hasn't been nailed down in all the reports about Google's expected mobile phone announcement is exactly what operating system will run the thing. Turns out, it could be Linux.That'd be a huge boost for the open-source OS. Reports that Linux would be at the heart of Google's gPhone first surfaced this August, in a report out of Asian by Jennifer Tan of Anian Research. (Tan's article is no longer extant, but LinuxDevices.com has the story.)

Subsequent Gphone story haven't focused much on the OS, chattering instead about the who, when, and where of the announcement. eFluxMedia is reporting that, along with the Gphone, Google will launch a development platform.

This means the Gphone will be open, very open, to third-party applications. Thus we see that Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are planning to stick it but good to Steve Jobs and too-tightly-wound iPhone ecosystem.

Still, one has to give Jobs credit for changing the mobile-device coverage equation from a discussion of the phones themselves into hagiographic musings on the wonderfulness of different phones' fathers (no mothers, yet).

We saw that in the coverage of the iPhone's launch, where numerous stories made it sound like Jobs had practically invented the idea of a decent mobile device. Hey, if that's true, how come my Blackberry is so much more capable than the iPhone?

On the cusp of the Gphone's arrival, that trend is apparently being carried forward. The object case is "I Robot: The Man Behind the Google Phone in Sunday's Times, which opens with this:

Oh, please. Rubin puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you and me. Stop trying to convince me how uber-cool this guy is, and just tell me what's in the darn phone. For that, though, we have to go back to the August LinuxDevices story, which sets forth this prospective features list:

large color screen; 3G-capable; Call minutes and text messages are to be funded by "mobile advertising"; T-Mobile is the U.S. carrier. [A minor aside: Regarding the 3G capability, this means the GPhone will be theoretically faster than EDGE-based iPhones and Blackberrys. The one confusing rub is that T-Mobile is in the midst of deploying its 3G network across the United States. So, while there are thousands of T-Mobile 3G cells in New York City, that's not the case everywhere, meaning that speeds may be slower in other parts of the country, at least for a while longer.] OS Importance To me, the most important implication of the Gphone is, it could vault Linux to the forefront of the mobile-device landscape (bold added for emphasis). Linux has been gaining ground for some time as a handset OS, though Symbian is still the most widely used. The Times article is accompanied by a botched chart, where it shows "millions used" for each OS where I believe it intends to indicate percentage. Regarding the Times chart as intended, not as shown, it quotes IDC as giving Symbian 74 percent of the mobile OS market; Linux 13 percent; Windows Mobile 12 percent [that's interesting! Linux is shown as inching out Windows Mobile]; Blackberry OS 11 percent; the moribund PalmOS at 3 percent; and Mac OS X at 2 percent. That last one is curious, since it's widely assumed that the iPhone can't possibly be equipped with a full-blown version of OS X. (It's assumed to have a downsized implementation of same.) In any, given Mac OS's heritage, the iPhone is a closer relative to any Linux phone than it is to Windows Mobile devices.) P.S. For your entertainment pleasure, please read my Top 7 iPhone Questions Steve Jobs Doesn't Want You To Ask. P.P.S. Like this blog? Subscribe to its RSS feed, here.