According to a trusted source who's seen it with their own eyes, the Google Phone "is a certainty."


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.)

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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.