Google isn't saying much, but the way the post ends with "We hope to share more after our dogfood diet" suggests that there's something coming. It's much more coy than their usual outright denials (by the way, Google, what about those?).

TechCrunch is reporting that the mystical Google Phone is indeed the HTC Passion we saw leaked a few weeks ago (pictured above). Our sources are calling it the Passion, too. Update: Now the Wall Street Journal is calling it the Nexus One.

Update: TmoNews is also saying that the device will be sold directly by Google, but supported by T-Mobile at launch. No word on if T-Mobile will be the exclusive carrier.

Everything keeps lining up. Judging by how fast this news is coming, I wouldn't be surprised if this thing pops up in the wild soon. [Official Google Blog via TechCrunch, TmoNews, thanks Travis]

After spending a week using the G1, I can say it's a good start, and a clear indication of good Android developments to come. But the phone itself has some serious problems with accessibility and usability, issues that no number of third-party apps are going to be able to solve. Here's what I loved and hated about the T-Mobile G1.

The Hardware
Body: The body was made by HTC, a Taiwanese company that makes Windows Mobile devices for Motorola, Palm and its own line. This phone is built just like those. The back is classic matted and grip-friendly HTC. The swivel-flip feels almost exactly like earlier HTC phones, only it extends out and then back in again, revealing the keyboard underneath. This motion gives a satisfying snap when opened, though it might be too loud in a quiet office.

Keyboard: It's got numerous problems. First, it's set so that the raised section on the right, with scroller ball and home and menu keys, is always in your way when you're trying to type. This is annoying, even after you figure out how to work around it. The individual keys aren't raised high enough over the body for easy touch typing, though at least the keyboard is backlit, in case you're texting in the dark. The space and backspace key are tinier than we'd like. And it's even more awkward than normal to type while charging the phone, because the miniUSB cable is in the way.

Buttons: There are five face buttons on the device—call, home, back, power/end and menu—and they're all fairly straightforward. Hit home to bring you back to the home screen, menu to bring up a popup menu in your current app, and power/end button to lock your phone or hang up your call. That last part takes the most getting used to, since you're naturally going to want to use the red power button to quit apps or end tasks, but all that does is lock your phone.

Trackball: It feels great, better than on the BlackBerry Pearl, and it clicks down solidly. Still, switching between the trackball and the touchscreen can get awkward.

Screen: The touchscreen is bright, renders text clearly and is, on the whole, pretty great. It uses capacitive touch, like the iPhone, so you use your fingertip, not a stylus, to poke around. There are cases when screen presses don't register properly—they're not too often, but often enough to be noticeable.

Battery: A full charge lasts about a day, mainly because push Gmail grabs the internet every time the account receives an email, and mine receives plenty. Couple that with 3G data browsing and app usage—which you're most likely going to be doing a lot of—and you'll need to get used to a mid-day charge at work. Thankfully charging from near empty to near full takes only about two hours.

Wi-Fi: The Wi-Fi range seems slightly to be on par with comparable smartphones (HTC's Windows Mobile phones, iPhone), showing just about as many Wi-Fi hotspots in my house as the other ones did.

3G: I got noticeably decent browsing speeds, with an actual test registering 433kbps. This, of course, is only the case if your city has 3G access at all, since T-Mobile's only just starting to roll out their network.

Camera: It's passable and on par with previous HTC efforts. It does have autofocus, but other than that there's nothing spectacular with the G1's camera.

GPS: GPS is actually off by default, which produces a very inaccurate location when you try and find yourself on Google Maps. You'll have to switch this on manually.

Other Issues: It's hard to fathom why HTC left out a 3.5mm headphone jack in 2008, same for USB mass storage mode for Windows or Mac. Really? You have to pop out that microSD card and use a card reader every time you want to load a ringtone or a song or a photo or a video? Seriously? Apologies, there actually IS a USB mass storage mode, but you have to use the bundled HTC proprietary mini USB cable. Any old mini USB cable won't do! But yes, it's possible. Also, when the screen is flipped open, it's tilted down about three degrees—really annoying to certain people who like clean lines.

Operating System and Usability
Calling: Making phone calls on this thing works well. Call quality is good, but the screen annoyingly times out after about 10 seconds. If you want to power on the screen again, you have to hit the menu key or the "call" key, which takes you to the dialpad. It may just be that we punch in our credit card numbers or find contacts during a call more often than most people, but always having to bring up the screen again is a pain. And pressing the power/end button, which you'd think would power up the screen, actually just hangs up the call. Annoying. But as for the actually making calls part? No complaints from us.

Texting: Texts are arranged per contact in threads, and works well enough since texting is so simple. No cockups here.

Stability: The one word I'd use to describe the Android operating system is "solid". It's been my main device for a week, and I've yet to see the entire OS hang or freeze (haven't had to reboot yet). Individual apps have crashed or frozen, but Android handles this spectacularly well by using the PC paradigm where you can choose to Force Quit a frozen app or wait for it to unstick itself. This way, very little can take down the entire phone under everyday use. (Buggy hardcore apps that snake deep into core functions could probably succeed.)

Background Apps: Multitasking is one thing Android does really well. Apps can run in the background, receiving data and continuing to "exist," even though you don't see them. The OS handles memory management for you invisibly, giving processes a lower CPU priority and taking away their RAM when other programs need it. For now, examples are simple, like opening a browser, then a bunch of other apps, then returning to the browser. You can use four or five apps before before the browser has to re-fetch data on the web page. Presumably, programmers will soon make more impressive use of the background processing power.

Window Shade: Google's most unique multitasking helper is the notification window shade, which serves as an infodump of all incoming emails, messages, IMs and missed calls. Tapping a notification will take you to its corresponding app. No matter what app you're in, the shade drops smoothly into place when you pull it down, dragging your finger from the top. (Just opposite the window shade is the pull-up app menu. If you run out of room on your three desktop screens, you'll be visiting here for lesser used programs.)

Long Clicks: One convention that's used often—but not consistently—is the long press. Long presses are a mix between right clicking and playing the lottery. Hold down an area of the screen—you may see a menu pop up or you may get absolutely nothing. Long click on the main screen and it asks you which app shortcut you want to move to your desktop. Long click on the text message screen and you'll be prompted to delete or view a thread. Long click on Google Maps or a page in the browser, however, and nothing happens.

Interface: As we have observed, the UI suffers from general usability issues such as inconsistent actions or surprisingly unclickable regions like the browser's URL bar or the home screen's clock. But when you use it, you realize it is kinda pretty. Like the window shade, many of the transparencies, transitions, fade-ins, fade-outs, popups and other UI elements are slick, and definitely win out in aesthetics over smartphones like Windows Mobile. Compared to the iPhone, it still loses, but this comes down to a lack of multitouch capability—on the G1, for instance, you zoom by clicking + and - magnifier buttons. Like I said, it's definitely a solid OS, but it also needs some real work by some UI experts to make it easier to pick up and play with.

Apps
Contacts: Phone contacts sync nicely with Google's Gmail contacts—great if you use Gmail, and an extra place to backup your contacts if you don't. You can even scroll through them fast by dragging a bar on the right. The problem though is that the quick-scroll dragger is hyper-sensitive, and holding your finger still in one place can make the phone jitter between letters. Each contact has a default phone number displayed under his name—when you tap a contact it feels like you're dialing his number, even though you're just pulling up details.

Mail: There are actually two mail programs on the G1: Mail and Gmail. Mail lets you manage five accounts, while Gmail makes you tie your phone to just one account. But Gmail is one of the best apps on the phone, giving you 90% of the desktop features you use on a day-to-day basis. Archiving, labeling, reporting spam, deleting and starring are super easy and sync to webmail almost instantly. The best part of this Gmail implementation is that it's push the only push Gmail on any mobile device (Helio's phones also have it). T-Mobile failed to mention its cool keyboard shortcuts—I had to fiddle to figure out that you can hit "r" for reply or "a" to reply all. (Surely there are more.) A dumb flaw is that it won't auto-complete names when you start with someone's last name. I have to sort through 10 Brians to find Lam's address, when I should be able to just type Lam and have this be smart enough to figure out who I mean.

Marketplace: The Marketplace is divided into Games and Applications, with sub-categories such as Lifestyle, Productivity, Shopping and Tools. Downloading and installing apps are pretty much 1-click, like the iPhone App Store, and most apps launch just fine. However, since most developers don't have an actual Android phone to test their apps on, a lot of programs will be sluggish or even crash-prone in the first few weeks. Expect this to be fixed soon.

IM: The IM app is a very good client that supports AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live (MSN), and Yahoo. It's intuitive, works well with the keyboard and even offers background notification—unlike iPhone—so you can switch to other apps but still get incoming messages delivered to you via the top status bar.

Browser: The G1 browser, like Chrome on the desktop, is based on WebKit, the open source browser engine that also powers Safari and Mobile Safari. This means it's pretty damn good. That said, the lack of multitouch gestures in Android's version makes zooming a pain. It doesn't have Flash support (YouTube gets forwarded to the YouTube app) and it doesn't auto-zoom to maximize the column you want to read in your display. It can, however, remember your password for logins, like a desktop browser does.

Google Maps: Gmaps has most of what you'll find in the desktop version, including Satellite, Traffic and Street View. Once you turn on GPS, the phone's fairly decent at locating where you are even indoors, and Compass View is a gimmick that works sometimes and doesn't work other times—but then again, spinning around like an idiot makes you look like an idiot all the time.

Music Player: It's no iPod, but the G1's built-in music player gets the job done decently. It fits in fairly well with the rest of the Android experience, but we're definitely looking at third-party apps like TuneWiki to pick up the slack here. That's not to say the Music app is bad—it's perfectly fine. It's just not great.

Third-Party Apps: Some of the more promising apps like Tunes Remote, TuneWiki and Video Player aren't as fleshed out and stable as we like. Tunes Remote lags and crashes a lot, TuneWiki can't find our music and Video Player only supports a handful of codecs. We expect these all to be fixed soon. Other apps like AccuWeather, Barcode Scanner and Pac-Man work just fine despite being developed on the Android emulator. We're looking forward to good things here.

Verdict
The G1 phone and the Android operating system are not finished products. There are only three working Google Apps here—Gmail, Maps and Calendar—while Google Docs, Google News, Google Reader, Google Shopping, Google Images, Google Video, Blogger and Picasa are nowhere to be found. What's the deal?

We have high hopes for third-party coders to fill in gaps Google intentionally or unintentionally left in this OS. There's already a video player, and we're sure VLC will try and port some kind of version over. But your question is not whether the phone will be great down the line, it's whether or not it's good enough for you to buy it now.

The answer depends most on who you are. Despite all the UI quirks and bad design decisions, it's still better than other smartphone OSes out there. It's not perfect, but for people who like tinkering, its cons are outweighed by its pros such as Gmail and the Marketplace. Hopefully Android updates and more ports of Google apps will augment not just future phones but this one too. This isn't something you're going to give your mom for Christmas, but if you're an adventuresome gadget guy with some money to spend ($179) on a totally new, pretty exciting venture, then why not?

1. It's open! The single best thing about Android is that's a modern mobile phone OS that's also almost completely open, unlike some other locked down mobile OSes. (There are a few restrictions in accessing the hardware for security reasons.) It's based on Linux, and once Google has released Android, most of it will be totally open source, so it'll be incredibly easy to dive into its guts and mess around, which will help build a robust developer community, along with all of the other benefits of using open software. Most of its other awesome traits grow out of its openness, actually.

2. We'll keep the Steve references to a minimum here, but Android will accelerate the process that the iPhone helped kickstart last year—the gradual devolution of carriers to open, dumb pipes. Before, carriers controlled every single facet of what a phone could and could not do. They still do to an extent, and it's not completely "anything goes" on the iPhone and Android, but together they have and will make the mobile landscape change far more rapidly than before. As Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner told me a few days ago, just a few years ago, carriers thought that the idea of full internet access was ridiculous, not to mention dangerous, threatening the obscenely lucrative business they have set up around minuscule bits of data like text messages, crappy "web portals" and ringtones. Android phones will be constantly connected and totally revolve around the internet, incessantly sucking down ever cheaper data—a carrier's worst nightmare not so long ago.

3. You'll have tons of hardware options. Android's designed to be versatile, so lots of manufacturers will be putting it on lots of phones—ones with QWERTY keyboards, touchscreens, T9, outrageously spec'd out phones, as well as ones that are kinda crappy in the spec department, actually. But this also provides a common platform for developers, making it easy to put their apps on millions of phones. It's the benefit of any OS that runs on a lot of hardware—like Windows or Linux, etc. Of course, this is also the Windows Mobile argument against all of the other proprietary OSes like Palm and BlackBerry.

4. There's even more potential for amazing apps than the iPhone, because developers are almost completely unencumbered by arbitrary rules and restrictions. So awesome apps like Podcaster or Instictiv Shuffle won't be mercilessly killed for not fitting into a tightly controlled framework or navigating a byzantine approval process.

5. It'll have the best Google apps experience of any mobile device, and play super nicely with Gmail, Gcal, Maps and everything else Google puts out. Or at least it damn well better, since you know, it's Google's baby. Simple, direct syncing with Gcal is tops in our list, since doing it on the iPhone requires sacrificing a goat while chanting from a book covered in the skin of baby unicorns.

Bonus reason: Not an iPhone. And our software geek sister Lifehacker has some more too.

1. Google can see into your soul. If you've ever been wary about how much Google knows about you, how are you going to feel when they're all over your cellphone? While a lot of the reason Android came to be was just to get people really using the internet on their phone (because when people use the internet, they use Google), we won't be surprised to see contextualized local ads, kind of like the sidebar ones you see offering you a date from hot local girls in Brooklyn or whatever hovel you're holed up in. But this will be hot girls just around the corner, since the phone will know where you're at.

2. It's not on the US's two biggest carriers, AT&T or Verizon. Statistically speaking, you've got one of them. But so far only the two runts of the majors, Sprint and T-Mobile are going to have Android phones. T-Mobile's 3G network is pathetically tiny compared to the other three, and well, Sprint's the only carrier actively losing subscribers, if that tells you anything. It's possible we'll see some Android action on Verizon's mythical open network though.

3. Buuut, carriers still have the right to gimp Android to their liking, precisely because of its Apache licensing. So a Sprint Android phone could have its built-in "store" stocked only with, say, Yahoo! apps—or no store at all. In Verizon's hands, the UI could still look like it fell in a bucket of gaudy red paint.

4. Android is designed to run on a ton of different of hardware—phones with and without touchscreens, with and without QWERTY keyboards, phones with amazing specs, crappy phones, and everything in between. While this is a strong point as mentioned above, it could also be a point of suckiness. That means there won't be a consistent Android experience, and it'll depend heavily on the device you're using. Devs told us that you'll likely see different versions of their apps, so that on weakass phones, you'll have more diluted apps, which might be an issue for people picking up a cheap Android phone expecting to do everything a more expensive one will.

5. Relying too much on developers to fill in features could result in a phone that's not quite totally seamless and consumer-grade across the board. For instance, from what we've seen in the SDK, there's not a built-in, Google-made media player. It's rumored that the excellent TuneWiki will be Android's default player, which is great, but doing this for too many key features could make things a bit bumpy, since you're talking several developers instead of just one.

Bonus reason: It's not an iPhone.

Worse in the long-term is that the analyst's contacts tell him that developers are not exactly snapping up Google's SDK—they're too busy developing for the ten million other OSes out there, like Windows Mobile, Symbian, OS X and BlackBerry. It wouldn't be too surprising, given stuff like infrequent updates to the SDK, unless you're one of the super special developers with access to the privately updated one. The fact that bad news about Android keeps rearing its head isn't a good sign itself, since noise this persistent usually has a bit of signal embedded in it. [Barrons via Electronista]

The reporter noted that “The trio of Google execs also used the opportunity to talk about the inroads the company is making with its own branded mobile phone as a replacement for the iPhone.” [That appears to be a mix-up by the reporter, with Sergey and Larry actually talking about not producing their own phone, according to Reuters's Ken Li's notes in SAI.]

But, TechCrunch does have its own source, who "swears" that the Ammunition Design Group "is designing the Gphone and that it is a seriously beautiful device." They've worked with companies like Palm, Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer and Logitech in the past (a phone they designed for Sprint is pictured above). Not a confirmation by any means, but TechCrunch usually has decent info—so take that for what it's worth.

The more probable explanation for any sort of design work on a handset for Google is that they could be prototypes for marketing or other promotion—no one can make the call whether it's for production yet. [Tech Crunch and Mediaweek via BGR, Silicon Alley Insider]

That's just one reason it needed Android. Unlike Windows Mobile, which is all tangled up with Windows, Android's totally centered the web—where people naturally go to Google. While Android vs. iPhone is shaping up to be the new Windows vs. Mac (or open vs. closed), the iPhone actually proved the thesis that easy mobile net access is really easy access to Google: Christmas Day, the iPhone, "fewer than 5 percent of all smartphones worldwide, drove more traffic to Google than any other mobile device." By making Android all about net connectivity and giving developers a common platform to develop for hundreds of phone, the bet is that even with tons of third-party apps, it all comes back to Google. The web is the platform as much as the actual code-y bits.

Naturally, handset makers fear losing their brand in the hype, even as Google argues it means they don't have to waste time on the OS, but can concentrate on hardware and their own proprietary apps. (Course, if you're of the mind it's all about software now, then Google's argument is funky bunk. Hardware will matter maybe as much as Dell vs. HP—maybe that's a lot to you, maybe not so much. Besides, has HTC really had an identity in the first place?) Motorola is actually betting big, putting the original team behind the Razr on its Android phones, hoping it'll be a path to newfound glory.

Even if it (or anyone else) succeeds, ultimately they'll still just be a cog in the Android machine. By the same token, even if Android itself bombs out, as long as it forces open access to the internet, Google still stands to rake in the rewards. [Wired]

Assuming that the phone really is in production and will be delayed until 2009, that leaves the question of whether the Android platform as a whole will be delayed, since many other manufacturers besides Google are planning their own phones. Krakow's source doesn't say, which probably means it's still on track. Either that, or horribly, horribly delayed and the guy doesn't want to induce a panic. [The Street]

Update: Google spokesdudes say that the Android platform is a-okay.

We're still on track to announce Android-powered phones this year. Some of our partners are publicly stating that they plan to ship Android phones in the fourth quarter.

It sounds sort of fun but also sort of awkward, as I can't really imagine running around aiming my phone at some stranger on a crowded street. It would also be really annoying to get attacked while you were out on a date or something, having to explain that it was just some guy who was engaging you in your phone's virtual first person shooter. In any case, there's a beta open for this, although with no Android phones out yet I'm not sure how you can participate in it. [Product Page via Ubergizmo]

For better, for worse or for Google, it sent the formerly locked-tight mobile-phone industry into an open-access hysteria. True, Android and the Open Handset Alliance are still (mostly) pretty logos and promises on paper. But for a bunch of talk, it's lead to some very real action, like helping nudge Verizon out of its ugly, red-walled garden. All this gesturing might actually change the industry.

Android aside, we can really give Google props for helping to break the mobile industry via its hard fight for open-access provisions in the 700MHz spectrum auction. The provisions themselves could change the game for all telecoms, and Google doesn't even need to win!

If anyone thought Google was approaching the limits of its growth earlier in the year, Wall Street proved 'em wrong when gPhone hype pushed its stock past the $700-per-share mark, making it the fifth most valuable company in America. It's comfortably resting now at the hype-free level of about $670, over $550 more than the initial price of around $120. (At the time, many investors say that was too high.)

Google kept up the "don't be evil" motto by pumping lots of money into green energy and green research. Maybe this is because they believe in a better tomorrow, but maybe it's just to power their Matrix-like server farms without resorting to turning runaway Microsoft employees into living batteries.

On the Google application front, its office suite is still no Office-killer, and we still have some kinks we wish could be worked out of the Reader, but Google did make our lives easier in a couple ways, like by dropping the invite requirement to Gmail, adding IMAP support and getting even more iPhone-friendly. Yay. And, just the other day, it threw down with Wikipedia by launching its latest collect-all-knowledge component, Knol, which'll pay contributors—with ads. (Surprise.)

Owning YouTube kinda caught up to Google, and we're kinda sore on that front—it got sued by Viacom, bitched at by other media companies and then had to implement a content-filtering system. But possibly even more egregious was its addition of overlay ads.

Now for even less palatable stuff: Google knows pretty much everything about you and everyone you've ever loved and that probably won't ever change, even if it is trying to be a little less creepy. For instance, Google will still have all the info you think you're erasing from Ask.com. And, it still plays nice with ethically dubious—to be generous—Chinese censorship regulations to ensure its grip on a chunk of the massive and growing market over there, which doesn't exactly line up with the "don't be evil" screed. Even Sergey thinks so.

And the ads. It's much pretty much a given the catch on any Google goodness is that there'll be some sort of advertising wedged in there—true, nothing worth paying for is totally free, and Google doesn't appear game for charging monthly fees for every little service, like Microsoft and Yahoo! now do. But Google going mobile means ads becoming an increasingly unavoidable part of your mobile life— AdSense for Mobile is all fired up. It seems the lovely mobile industry freedom Google's fighting for isn't free. It costs a buck-oh-five—or a contextual spot.

Final grade: B But we think this grade is slippery: next year, Google will either be A+ or D. What Google is doing is either a massive greed-motivated build-up or a series of initiatives intended to change the tech business (and our world) for the better. In two semesters, we think we'll know if either is true—or if both are.

back at its headquarters, Google is already operating an advanced high-speed wireless network under a test license from the FCC, according to people familiar with the matter. The company has erected transmission towers on its campus for the network. Prototype mobile handsets powered by the Android software are currently running on it.

More over, according to the usual "people familiar with the matter," they're grinding out a plan to toss in all $4.6 billion or more all on their own because going in with partners promises complications in bidding setup and outcomes, as well as pissing off company A by going in with company B.

Why even jump into the messy, messy world of network operation when they've already got a hand in the jar with Android? The feel-good reason is that Google wants networks to be more open and competitive to drive more innovation and better, unrestricted services without artificial carrier walls and lockdowns.

The selfish side is that open networks mean carriers can't make it hard to use Google's wares or make Google pay carriers to get at customers. There's also the potential revenue of subscriber fees—hey, open doesn't mean free—and ads across the network, according to at least one analyst group.

Whatever Google decides, we'll know by Dec. 3, the deadline for declaring an intent to bid. And should they win, don't cream your jeans about the wild, woolly West of an open wireless network just yet, since Google—and any other winners—won't get their hands on the network until 2009, when analog broadcasts go dark. [WSJ]

•Programs, built by using Android's SDK, can be submitted January 2nd through March 3rd 2008.
•The top 50 programs earn $25K to continue development.
•Those in the top 50 are entered into a final round where ten $275k prizes and ten $100k prizes will be awarded.
•A second round of the contest starts in the second half of the year, when handsets running Android launch.
•"We believe that developers will be drawn to, and flourish in, the open and collaborative environment offered by the Android platform. The Android Developer Challenge is designed simply to catalyze that reaction."

Pay people decent money to do decent work. Who would have thought of that? [Android]

The only companies that join consortia are the ones who are too stupid or shitty to make a great product on their own. It's like, Hey, we've got forty spazzo companies that can't fuck their way out of a paper bag; let's put them all together and maybe they'll magically become some kind of big bad powerhouse.

There are, of course, numerous cons to the singular "hand of God" approach, but the problems with consortia that FSJ lays out are real. It's hard for everyone to agree, and rarely do all involved push for the "greater good" at their individual expense. It might be different this time around, but with so much at stake, martyrs for the Alliance probably won't exactly be lining up. And oh yeah, there's no phone to wrap our hands around yet. [FSJ via Daring Fireball]