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What has set the Internet rumor mill ablaze? Google has apparently reserved a couple of booths on the floor at the show, which begins on February 11th.

So at the show you may just be able to get your hands on some gPhone prototypes running Android, which would provide these handsets with an operating system, middleware, user-interface, and application support.

And since there isn't going to be a single gPhone (nope, Google isn’t getting into phone-hardware business) from a single manufacturer, you’ll likely see Android-based devices take on variety of different designs and form factors.

One smartphone veteran that has committed to building Android handsets is HTC (the picture above looks awfully HTC-like), a company that has designed and built Windows Mobile devices in a wide array of form factors over the years: with and without keyboards, keypads, touch screens, etc. There’s every reason to believe it’ll bring the same type of creativity to its gPhone designs.

Some pictures of devices purported to be running an early version of Android have even already made their way out and into the wild (see top picture from Gizmodo).

Google is just one (yes, very important) member of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of over 30 manufacturers, carriers, and developers looking to leverage Android as the foundation for a new type of mobile ecosystem , one not based on proprietary hardware and software standards.