And by "Google Phone" we don't simply mean another Android handset. We're talking about Google-branded hardware running a version of Android we haven't yet seen.

Over the next few weeks, Google Phones (most probably in early, prototype form) will flood the Mountain View campus. They'll don large LCDs while running a new version of Android—either Flan or the version of Android beyond it—which our source spotted running on Google's handset as well as a laptop. (Whatever the software was, it most certainly wasn't Chrome OS, we were assured.)

But maybe the most intriguing bit is what someone said to our source offhandedly, that the current Android, the we all know and love, is not the "real" Android. So what makes for a "real" version of Android?

Our best guess is an Android OS with Google Voice at its heart.

That's probably why ABC News last year agreed to pay wages for BlackBerry time during big breaking news events. But fights involving smartphones and wages are growing, the Wall Street Journal reports, as the devices spread. At least, they are among companies that can afford highfalutin' text-based mobile communication, during a recession. Not all can!

[via Business Insider]

(Pic: Eric Havir)

Cha complains that reps for Sprint and Palm have shown the device off at trade shows, but won't actually let go. At all times, someone acting in their official capacity is hanging desperately onto the Pre, which it announced in January but has yet to release on the market.

Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox, reached at a deli in New York after spending a day letting radio shock jock Howard Stern get both of his greasy mitts all over the Pre, explained that the company "didn't want to play a game of pass-the-device in a crowded room." She suggested but did not quite spell out the no-win prospect of wrestling the precious, Bono-funded device out of an deranged blogger's hands.

We think the policy is utterly wrongheaded. We can't think of better publicity than a gadget hound, surrounded by a crowd of flacks huffing and sighing, defying their disapproval to hold onto the Pre.

A wireless exec from Disney was at the recent invite-only "brain drain," according to a tipster who was at the meeting on Intel's campus in Santa Clara, Calif. As was John Faith, the head of MySpace Mobile. Alan Kay, a famous computer scientist attended, along with a host of other graybeards. So what did Intel show all the geeks it gathered?

Executives shared secret plans to build a new mobile device based on Intel technology that the chipmaker hopes to have on the market this year. The inspiration: the runaway success of Apple's iPhone. And the fear: that this will be a rerun of Intel's past failed attempts, like the dead-on arrival "ultramobile portable computer" concepts it showed off last year.

Devices based on Intel's design — they probably won't carry the Intel brand, except in the "Intel Inside" sense — will run Google's Android operating system. The design displayed at the summit also featured a "shitload" of variable resistance sensors, our source told us — a simple technology found in dials, touchscreens, and other input sensors. Apple uses a more complex touchscreen technology in its iPhone, suggesting Intel's approach might lead to cheaper touch-sensitive phones, or even devices that respond to the way they're held.

The résumés of the people in attendance suggested a serious effort — just about every major tech company in Silicon Valley was represented. And Intel has reason to gun for Apple's iPhone. Apple has bought its own chip-design subsidiary, allowing it to bypass Intel's industry-standard processors. But that's all we know so far. Has anyone else heard about this top-secret Intel summit? Fill us in on what you know.

(Photo via Buylabcoat.com)

The word from a plugged-in Sunnyvale source: Bartz, who has been on the job less than three weeks, was instantly suspicious of Yahoo's attempt to ship its own branded cell phone. But she got the proof she needed, according to our source, when she saw her daughter play with a prototype of the smartphone preloaded with Yahoo services. Layne, now a junior at the University of Southern California, immediately put the One Phone away and switched back to her own cell phone.

The fallout, our source says: a top Yahoo mobile executive left, and others may have been fired.

A Yahoo flack issued a non-denial denial, flatly insisting the anecdote "has no basis in fact" and then declining to answer further questions about the phone project. As for the firings, she said she had no knowledge of any firings or staff departures. Motorola, and AT&T did not respond to inquiries on the matter.

But the mere fact that this anecdote is making the rounds, though, bodes well for Bartz. It may strike some detractors as an executive making flip decisions. Another way to look at it: Bartz is going by her gut and exercising a clear vision for what Yahoo will and won't do. When she was hired, many expressed doubts about Bartz's boring background in enterprise software sales. It may turn out, after all, that she is the product nazi Yahoo has long needed.

Anyone would be forgiven for thinking the Palm Pre, the long-overdue smartphone unveiled today in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, is an obvious iPhone wannabe, with a similar shape, a touchscreen, and a fancy built-in Web browser.

It was built, too, by a cast of Apple hand-me-downs: Chairman Jon Rubinstein was formerly Jobs's right-hand man, and Palm's campaign of hiring away Apple employees grew so large, and so obvious, that Jobs is said to have called Rubinstein and screamed at him. Palm is backed by Elevation Partners, a private equity firm where former Apple CFO Fred Anderson now works. (The rivalry might explain why Jobs is no longer seen palling around with Bono, who's also a partner at Elevation.)

But the most glaring way in which Palm has rebuilt himself in Apple's image is in its executives' raging superiority complex. Take this exchange between AllThingsD blogger Peter Kafka and Palm CEO Ed Colligan:

The biggest unknown is price, which went unmentioned during the demo. My assumption is that Palm would try to take market share by coming in significantly lower than the $200 or so Apple wants for its iPhone. But when I ran that theory by Palm CEO Ed Colligan, he looked at me liked I’d peed on his rug. “Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product,” he asked, then walked away.

Jobs could not have put it better himself. But Palm, which has struggled for years, has far more to prove before Colligan and Rubinstein can act so cock of the walk.

(Photo by Corinne Schulze/CNET News)

It’s funny - but the first time I heard about Android was about 2.5 years ago, when Eric Schmidt told me about the device at Stanford after I got a job offer from Google (yet before I accepted it!). Since then I have seen many iterations of the software. The software. Not the device itself, because sadly it hasn’t changed in many years. The reason many people see the phone as ugly and old-fashioned is simply… because it IS! It’s a design unchanged for at least two years, without iterations on it besides color schemas (it’s now available in Zune-brown along with white and black) and the silly ‘with Google’ description on the back. Don’t ask me what ‘with Google’ means. I didn’t understand it back then and still don’t understand it today.

Not only did it end-run the App Store, it cut Apple out of its 30 percent take on the fee. No more, though. Apple has shut down access to the ad hoc license system. I wouldn't go so far as to claim Apple's iron-fist approach will cause consumers to switch phones. But there's an obvious angle for Google: Play up the goofy apps like Pull My Finger that Steve Jobs wouldn't touch. Because if you've ever watched a bunch of drunk twentysomethings playing with their phones in a nightclub, you know that stupid and entertaining often beats pretty and functional.

"It is still just a phone running on a fourth-placed proprietary network," writes Blankenhorn. He says Google won't realize its full vision for Android — "a handheld Internet client running on a true broadband network" — until Clearwire finishes building a new wireless broadband network, backed in part by Google's money. That's supposed to happen by next year, but even Clearwire CEO Ben Wolf is skeptical: "They say the middle of next year. I'll believe it when I see it." Notice how no one's talking about whether the Dream is actually fun to use?