Just as we found out that Google’s employees are getting Google Phones for Christmas, the search engine giant officially confirmed the existence of a prototype “mobile lab” smartphone. This device should combine innovative hardware with Android software, according to Google’s officials.
A “mobile lab” is a device that experiments with new Android software and new hardware, plus it has the advantage of being handed out to “Google employees across the globe” for testing. Their feedback will be crucial in the development of the product, as Google spokesperson Mario Queiroz wrote in a mobile blog post.
Although the specifications of the Google Phone are not known, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington claims that the Android smartphone will be built by HTC and it’ll be launched in early January 2010. The phone will be sold unlocked, it’ll run Android 2.1 and it’ll look like HTC Passion or HTC HD2. Expect to find a Snapdragon CPU on it, a high res OLED touchscreen and two microphones, one used to eliminate background noise.
The camera on it is supposed to be pretty large for a phone and it seems that the device will come with a voice to text feature.
[via tgdaily]
