Google Releases Nexus One Phone

After handing out prototypes to its employees just before Christmas, Google decided now was the time to unleash it's next Android phone offering to the rest of us.

Built by HTC and running the latest version (V 2.1) of Google's mobile operating system Android, the Nexus One looks like a real contender and should go some way into challenging Apple's iPhone as well as RIM's Blackberry for smartphone sales.

Whilst we'll have to wait until the spring to see it over here in the UK (Vodafone), US citizens have a choice of purchasing the phone contract free for $529 or enter a two year contact with T-Mobile for $179.

Verizon, one of the largest communications companies in the US, will take on the Nexus One in the spring.

Whilst i'm all for Google entering the smartphone market i'm not sure i'd put my money into one of their offerings, or at least not just yet. The Nexus One is just one of many phones Google and the Open Hand Set Alliance have released in under two years. Whilst i'm psyched at the way the phones and platform are developing, their still only clones of the iPhone.

Google Maps apart (come on Apple) there's nothing new to the Nexus One and one can't help feeling that we'll see a few more of these Phones from other alliance members over the course of 2010, all launching as the next best thing.

By the time everybody else catches up, Apple will have released their 4th gen iPhone. Playing catch up is how it's going to be for the alliance in the short term but Google has this nasty habit of taking an idea and making it better. Remember Alta Vista?