No, there is no Gphone, at least not in the sense of a palpable piece of hardware.

Instead, Google has decided to join with the mobile operators and manufacturers like HTC, T-Mobile, Qualcomm, Motorola, and over 25 others in an Open Handset Alliance. This alliance has one goal: it will release a platform, called Android, that will consist of a mobile operating system, a user interface, applications, and an SDK (which should be available in a week’s time).

You don’t know how good this sounds to me, who has just finished a two-hour voyage into the murky bog of Symbian UIQ3 software. Having recently acquired a Sony Ericsson P1i, I was excited to finally be able to get some of those cool smartphone applications and use them for an extended period of time, not just for testing. However, the many flavors of Symbian - S60, S80, UIQ2, UIQ3, and others - are confusing as hell, and finding software that actually works on your phone is a pain.

With Google and many mobile heavyweights supporting Android, in due time it should become a platform with a multitude of free, quality applications and good, rock solid support, and that’s definitely something that’s missing from the world of mobiles today.

So, when can we expect to actually see phones sporting Android? Google says somewhere in the second half of 2008. I can wait.