Google’s own slider smartphone patent app

Google’s ambitions (and their limits) in mobile space are pretty well known by now.

Google wants to have one of the major mobile OS’es out there. Android 1.0 is a good start, but Google is looking forward for Android 3.0 release next year to really get going.

And by now it should be  clear that big G will leave the hardware side of the business to others.

So what the heck Google is doing, patenting it’s own smartphone designs?

Yep, while browsing through patent databases I stumbled on a Google patent app called “Electronic device with hinge mechanism”, filed in August of 2007 for a mobile slider handset:

I guess this Google phone design could be the result of some enterprising Google engineer spending 20% time on his own projects. Or it might be representation of Google efforts for a phone reference design before they decided to stay on the software side of business. Or something else.

Looking at the drawings of this Google smartphone device I can’t find anything very interesting, or even things that have not been implemented already in one way or the other.

But the patent app shows the design work and ideas from 2006 – early 2007. A mobile device with multi-directional sliding keyboard, big display  to easily browse the Net, and peruse Google services, was the thing big G was probably looking for.

And, maybe, felt the need to step in, because there weren’t many such devices back then.

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Posted on 26 Feb 09 - Filed in Android, Patents, google - Comments - Written by Staska

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