Google Nexus One officially announced and available

Wait no more (for some countries), the Google Nexus One is officially announced and available for order on Google web site.

Peter Chou (HTC CEO), Andy Rubin (Android main man) and Google’s VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra hosted a press conference at Mountain View, California. The Nexus One was revealed and yes, Google will be selling it themselves. The Nexus One has already received major coverage and you should have seen it on all major media by now.

Nexus One is to be sold direct by Google on their own web store - http://www.google.com/phone. The unlocked version will cost you USD529 and yes, they will ship to some countries.  But for the moment, they will ship to 3 other countries only – UK, Hong Kong and Singapore.  They are selling it along with selected partners also – T-Mobile has it at USD179 and it will be coming toVerizon soon too. And in Europe, it will be sold through Vodafone with a discounted price with mobile plan sign up later this spring.

And we have the official specs from Google now:

• 1Ghz CPU 3.7″ OLED display
• trackball
• GPS
• Accelerometer
• light and proximity sensors
• 5 megapixel camera with LED flash.
• Active noise cancellation which uses two microphones on the device to suppress background waffle. (something new!)
• The software – Android 2.1 (Eclair, not Flan)
• A lot of voice features including the ability to speak to your phone and have it type out your emails.
• Google Earth (yeah!!).

The full specs of the phone is here.

The press release is after break.

Android was developed with one simple idea: Open up mobile devices to enable greater innovation that will benefit users everywhere.

We first executed on this vision a little over a year ago, when we launched Android on one device with one operator in one country. Today, we have 20 devices with 59 operators in 48 countries and 19 languages. And because Android is free and open source, it continues to flourish. Android allows devices to be built faster, and at lower cost. And anyone can build anything on top of the platform. This ultimately benefits users.

To help adapt Android to the needs of consumers, we apply our engineering resources to selected projects with handset makers and operators. Together we have improved the rate and pace of innovation in mobile phones. The volume and variety of Android devices today has exceeded even our most optimistic expectations. And we believe we can accelerate the pace of innovation further. So we thought: What if we work even more closely with our partners to create devices which showcase some of the great software technology we’ve been working on? And what if we make those devices available for purchase through a new, simple online web store from Google?

Well, today we’re pleased to announce a new way for consumers to purchase a mobile phone through a Google hosted web store. The goal of this new consumer channel is to provide an efficient way to connect Google’s online users with selected Android devices. We also want to make the overall user experience simple: a simple purchasing process, simple service plans from operators, simple and worry-free delivery and start-up.

The first phone we’ll be selling through this new web store is the Nexus One — a convergence point for mobile technology, apps and the Internet. Nexus One is an exemplar of what’s possible on mobile devices through Android — when cool apps meet a fast, bright and connected computer that fits in your pocket. The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call “superphones.” It’s the first in what we expect to be a series of products which we will bring to market with our operator and hardware partners and sell through our online store.

Manufactured by HTC, the Nexus One features dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., a large 3.7″ OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colors and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ chipset for blazing speeds. Running on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, the software includes innovations like a voice-enabled keyboard so you can speak into any text field, fun Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery for richer media experiences and lots more. Of course, it also comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation.

Today, the web store allows you to purchase the Nexus One without operator service or with service from T-Mobile USA. We expect to add more operators, more devices and more countries in the future, including Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone in Europe. To learn more about the Nexus One, and our new web store, we recommend checking it out for yourself by visiting www.google.com/phone. We look forward to seeing how our new program and the Nexus One contributes to accelerating innovation on mobile products for the benefit of users worldwide.