Native Google Phone Confirmed

There have been rumors for over a year that Google was planning to build their own phone, and this weekend Techcrunch has confirmed that Google employees have been given handsets to test out (and build ground level marketing buzz). Besides being one of the sexiest phones on the market (some reports even place its UI to be better than the iPhone), it is also believed that the phone will be sold as an unlocked handset. This could prove to be a game-changer for the industry, making it possible for individuals to no longer be required to be tied to their carrier’s phone lineup.

CrunchGear reported the following, “Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba). There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.”