Don’t worry Google, it happens to the best of us. Not being to perform as expected is something Google might have not foreseen. It is rumored that those Android powered smartphones are not to be expected anytime soon. With only T-Mobile and HTC to possibly, maybe, get an Android phone by the end of the year things aren’t looking good for Google and their increasing interest in the mobile market.

Guess who will benefit from this? Well everyone. Basically the Android was, I mean is, a hope. Do you feel you had enough Symbian? What about Windows Mobile? OS X anyone? Android could be a powerful adversary. And we should expect lots of applications to be designed for it being an open source thing and what not. Notice how it “could be” and it “should be” but it isn’t!
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A few rumors have been circulating in the mobile phone market that Google and Dell are currently partnering to develop a series of GooglePhones — mobile phones using the Google Android OS. According to sources, Google is denying this, although more speculations abound that the first Goodell (Google + Dell) phone will be showcased in 3GSM in Barcelona.

Update: Dell denies the existence of this said partnership. We won’t be seeing Goodell phones after all. Too bad.

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Winstron has unveiled their new GW4 smartphone in CES 2008. Albeit running on Linux during that time, Winstron says the GW4 will run on the Google Android when it’s presented to big firms on March 2008 for branding, making it, possibly, the first phone to run on the Andoid. Generally speaking, there’s nothing extraordinary about the GW4. it features a touch screen with a QWERTY keyboard. It has GPRS connectivity with 3G being introduced by the end of the year.

Specs:

Networks - GSM/GPRS (without EDGE)
Chipset - TI OMAP 1710 216 MHz CPU and 64 MB of memory
Display – 2.5” 320×240 pixels touchscreen
2-megapixel camera
Wi-Fi 802.11g
Built-in SIP VOIP-client
Opera browser
Widgets (i.e. weather forecast of share rating)

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Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins of Mashable talked about the anonymous tip they received about a non-working Google Android Demo. We, here in Mobilewhack, have received the same thing, although this time, the tipper has a name (which, of course, we won’t reveal). We received the same email Mashable did, with a very few changes. According to the tip, a contextual search on the Google Android Phone revealed a page wherein which we could test out the Google Android Phone. The tipper said that it picks up phrases such as “I’m hungry” and it plays a Burger King commercial. To see it for yourselves, go to http://69.57.168.29/asr/.

I had played the video that’s embedded on the page and had to smack my head on the wall. The gag video by Nalts, the YouTube viral video guru, wasn’t very encouraging. Actually we had reported about the video a few weeks ago before people caught wind about it due to this incident. I also tested the demo itself and got stuck on the next page which displays the word “Calling…” Granted, I’m not in the US and according to the page, only US numbers would work. But still, according to Mashable, their “call” didn’t go through either.

We don’t know what’s going on. It might be an elaborate attempt to accomplish any of the following:

1. To collect phone numbers
2. To promote the video (it’s a “viral” video after all)
3. To have various tech blogs write about it (which is exactly what we’re doing).
4. To promote a particular fast food chain.
5. To play a joke on all of us.

OR it might actually be a working Google Android demo, it just didn’t work for us here in Mobilewhack (No, really. Err…right? After all, according to this site, it worked for them.). If you do decide to try the “demo” out for yourselves and it actually worked, do tell us.

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