As expected, at a press conference at its headquarter Google has announced the Nexus One today, Google's own Android smartphone, running on Android 2.1/Eclair and manufactured by HTC. Featuring quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and triband UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA at 2100/1700/900 MHz with HSDPA up to 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA up to 2 Mbps as well as WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Furthermore onboard are aGPS, cell tower and Wi-Fi positioning a digital compass and an accelerometer. The device sports a 3.7" widescreen WVGA (800 x 480 pixel) AMOLED touchscreen, a 5 megapixels autofocus camera with LED flash AGPS support which is able to capture videos at 720 x 480 pixels at 20 frames per second or higher, depending on lighting conditions.

The Google Nexus One is powered by a Qualcomm QSD 8250 CPU at 1 GHz and runs Android 2.1/Eclair. It features 512 MB Flash ROM and 512 MB RAM and comes with a 4 GB microSD Card (which is expandable to 32 GB). At a size of 119 mm x 59.8 mm 11.5mm, the Nexus One weights 130 grams with the 1400 mAH battery.

Shipping from today, the Google Nexus One is now available online - from Google (Google Checkout account is required) - but for certain markets only. Initially it's only available in the U.S. for US$ 529 (unsubsidized) or US$ 179 (subsidized with a new T-Mobile U.S. plan). However, Google is also shipping to Hong Kong, Singapore and and the UK but not to continental Europe where the partner will be Vodafone with an expected launch later this year.

UPDATE: Just to make it clear: While Vodafone will be Google's European Nexus One-launch partner, it doesn't mean that the Nexus One will be Vodafone branded or SIM-locked at all. It will just be distributed via Vodafone and Vodafone will offer it additionally with tariffs to subsidize the device. But customers are free to buy it without tariffs and it will stay Google's Android smartphone, not Vodafone's (in Europe) or T-Mobile's (in the U.S.). The Vodafone press release/tweet wasn't clear about this fact.

Cheers ~ Arne