News

Google officially reveals its superphone - Nexus One

Launched now with T-Mobile US for $179 or $529 sim-free

Google officially reveals its superphone - Nexus One
|

After all the hype and rumours of the past weeks, Google finally officially announced its Nexus One Android device, or 'superphone' as it's apparently called.

Manufactured by HTC, the touchscreen device boasts a 3.7-inch 400 x 800 pixel AMOLED display, and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon (QSD 8250) chip running at 1 GHz.

It has a rear-facing 5MP camera with 2x digital zoom and LED flash. This can capture video at 720x480 pixels at 20 frames per second or higher, depending on lighting conditions.

It also has AGPS, a digital compass, accelerometer, and cell tower and Wi-Fi positioning.

Despite this, it's fairly compact at only 119 tall by 59.8 mm wide and 11.5 mm thick, weighing 130g.

As with Android devices, there's a trackball, which glows three different colours to notify you about various events. There are also four touch buttons at the bottom of the screen to handle calls, and select home and back, as you'd expect.

In terms of inputs, there's a 3.5mm headphone jack with four contact points for microphone and a remote, and Nexus One handles stereo Bluetooth. It also has active noise cancellation thanks to a rear-mounted microphone, and there's a side mounted volume control switch.

Another neat touch is the metal plate on the back on which you can choose to have two lines of custom text engraved, in a similar way to Apple enables with iPods.

In terms of software, Nexus One is currently running Android 2.1, which is an update of the Eclair OS.

In terms of availability, you can buy it now from the Google phone website unlocked for $529, shipping to the US, the UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Or you can get it for $179 with a two-year $80/month contract from T-Mobile US.

Other countries and carriers will be rolled over time with Vodafone and Verizon signed up for a spring release.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.