After years of rumours, it appears that plans for a Google Phone are beginning to take shape.

A post made at the weekend on the Google Mobile blog by Mario Queiroz, vice president of Product Management said that some Google insiders were testing a device running the Android operating system.

“We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities,” he said.
Queiroz used the term ‘eating your own dogfood’ to describe the trials, an expression that derives from pet food firm Alpo, which used it to show confidence in its own products.
However, it is the deliberate lack of detail about the hardware that is really driving the speculation.

“Unfortunately, because dogfooding is a process exclusively for Google employees, we cannot share specific product details,” said Queiroz.

Speculation about a Google Phone or GPhone first surfaced prior to the company announcing the formation of the Open Handset Alliance and the Android OS.