If you’re a gadget type of person then unless you’ve been hiding under a rock on a deserted island or otherwise avoiding the Intertubes lately, then you’ve no doubt heard about the so-called Google Nexus One handset. Of course, people have been talking about a Google phone for years (ever since it gobbled up a company working on what eventually turned into Android). There are no details yet (unless you work for The Google), but the company has confirmed what was up on its official Google Mobile Blog. It is a carefully-worded statement that doesn’t actually state that a Google-branded phone is in the works (as some would have us believe), or that the handset is actually what it is being tested.

To wit:

At Google, we are constantly experimenting with new products and technologies, and often ask employees to test these products for quick feedback and suggestions for improvements in a process we call dogfooding (from “eating your own dogfood”). Well this holiday season, we are taking dogfooding to a new level.

We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe.

That’s apparently straight from the, er, dog’s mouth — so to speak — Mario Queiroz, vp of the Google’s  product management. As he explained, the company isn’t officially releasing any specs, as the product is in development. But what exactly is the product? Sounds like the next version of Android, it’s mobile OS, as opposed to any sort of Google phone, per se.

But this is the Internet, right? Which means rumors and conjecture are the order of the day. Some people are claiming it’s a Google-branded phone; others are being a bit more circumspect in their conjecture.  I had to laugh in reading the comments on the Google Mobile Blog; fan boys people are already to return their new Moto Droids because … breathless pause … Google’s coming out with its own phone! Er …

The phone peeps over at gadget blog Brighthand have been following the story quite closely (and were the first to point out that Google doesn’t make it sound like a self-branded phone is in the works); even keeping tabs on what 3G networks this GSM phone works on here in the United States. Apparently only Google peeps using T-Mo get 3G; AT&T users are stuck with 2.5 G.

I wonder if Google employees get in trouble now if they get caught at work with an iPhone or something? Anyway, according to Brighthand, the specs on the phone — likely a version of the forthcoming HTC Bravo — shake out like this:

• 3.7-inch, WVGA, AM-OLED display
• optical trackpad.
• Android OS 2.1 (the advanced dog-food version, no doubt)
• 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
• 5 megapixel camera
• GPS receiver
• microSD flash memory card slot

So, if we assume for the sake of argument — now don’t get too worked up into a tizzy fan boys — that Google is planning on bringing a Google-branded phone to market, would it fair better that other recent entrants — cough, cough — Nuvifone — cough, cough — into the GPS-enabled smarpthone arena? Going with an established handset maker that already has Android phones on the market, the Nexus handset would ostensibly prove less problematic than most first generation devices.

But it would be an iffy business move, particularly in the current climate, and furthermore would complicate its existing business relationships. Google would essentially become a competitor to the very customers to which it licenses the (I’m sure) lucrative Android mobile operating system. I doubt very much that the “mobile lab” is actually a Google-branded phone in the works, but rather this new whiz-bang HTC handset is being used to test new features of a forthcoming Android version, as the Google VP  more or less says.

In any event, the HTC Bravo sounds pretty gee-whiz. The photo to the left is cadged from Brighthand; this is the so-called Google Nexus One.

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