• The Boston Globe, Tuesday, September 4, 2007 10:45 AM

Ever since Google's extensive plans for the mobile wireless industry were unveiled, the media and blogosphere have been abuzz over whether big G plans to enter the phone-making market, too. A prototype for Google's new mobile phone is being built in the search giant's local research lab in Cambridge, Mass.

Google is keeping mum, but one unnamed entrepreneur described the "Gphone" as "simpler" and less flashy than Apple's iPhone. Another said that Google mobile exec Rich Miner showed him "a prototype with a clear case, so you could see the innards."

Google is allowing the speculation. One blogger said a source told him the new phone would look "BlackBerry-like" and have distribution contracts with a number of different carrier, unlike Apple which is locked in a partnership with AT&T for five years. "Nobody at Google asked me to take it down," the blogger said, adding that much of the post was "me reasoning as a software architect." Earlier this summer, The Wall Street Journal reported Google was designing a handset it wanted manufacturers to build and the big telecom carriers to distribute.

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