Google Shows First Android GPhone Prototype

Sure, Google engineer director Steve Horowitz says "I'm here to tell you there is actually no GPhone" in this interesting Android demonstration video I've linked to. But then he goes on to show off a GPhone prototype he's been working with for the last six months. So let's go to the videotape.You have to skip ahead to the 1:20 mark of the video I've embedded in this post to see Horowitz demo the phone. The first part of the video spotlights Sergey Brin speaking real slowly, for the benefit of Japanese viewers who are following the subtitles on the screen.

The interesting takeaway one gets from Horowitz's demo of his first prototype is that Android (the software behind the GPhone) and the GPhone itself don't seem like they're intended to take on Apple's iPhone frontally. Rather, they're iPhones in the small -- iPhone shuffles? They pack iPhone-like functionality into a small package, and onto a screen smaller than the iPhone's.

This is important, because, again, as Horowitz says, Google itself is not going to be making the GPhone. It is preparing a platform, which can be replicated in a thousand cheapy handsets. And it wants even the crappiest model to support cool stuff, implemented stylishly, which you can apparently do with Android. So what the GPhone will do in one fell swoop is raise the bar, making iPhone/GPhone class features the minimum that's acceptable on any phone.

But Google isn't stopping there. In the second demo -- shoot ahead to 3:08 of the video -- he demos a GPhone with an iPhone-like form-factor. It's even adopted the iPhone's drag-your-page around model.

It's also equipped with video acceleration (Horowitz demos the large phone showing what looks suspiciously like a Doom-style video game.) This big GPhone is going to leave Apple's 3G iPhone in the dust. Steve Jobs, beware.

Here now the video:

Purists will note that this video was released on April 9. I ended up surfing over to it because I was looking for something more recent, out of the Google I/O two-day developer conference, held May 28 and 29 in San Francisco. Drudge linked to a London Times Online article containing a video which purports to show the "first" GPhone preview. It's really the same phone which Horowitz shows in the second portion of the video I've embeded above, and Horowitz's version is clearer.

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