Lucinda Barlow, Communications Director for Google Austalia said "We want to gradually roll out the Nexus One to different countries in order to gain user feedback internationally and ensure the ordering process works smoothly. The Nexus One also had to undergo certification in all countries we sell the phone in, and we wanted to ensure that the import regulations didn't make the phone prohibitively expensive. Because of this, we decided to initially sell the Nexus One in three countries. We hope to allow people in other countries to purchase the Nexus One and future phones from Google soon"
HTC executives attending the 2010 CES show in Las Vegas have denied that they requested a ban of the new phone in Australia. The Taiwanese Company that is manufacturing the new Nexus One phone for Google has said that it will shortly launch new Google Android phones in Australia.
At today's launch in the US, Google executives described their new Android offering as a "super phone".
Google executives claimed that it's early days for Android in the battle with the Apple iPhone.
HTC CEO Peter Chou, who attended the Google launch, was praised as a pioneer in the development of the Android operating system.
"The combination of Google's software and HTC's hardware design makes this a groundbreaking product for the two companies" he said.
Erick Tseng, senior product manager at Google, told the press briefing that the new phone has a 3.7" OLED display, which provides deep contrast and rich colours. He said that a key component of the new phone was a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1 GHz processor, something Tseng called "really fast", especially when you start running multiple apps. The device also comes with a multi-colour notification LED trackball to help users navigate the UI but also to notify users of new mail, messages or incoming calls. It also has GPS and an accelerometer. It also comes with a light sensor, which allows for adjustments for power savings. A proximity sensor dims the phone as it's raised to the ear.
The new phone is slim at just 11.5 mm. It weighs 130 grams, and comes with 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. It also has stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. A key new feature is active noise suppression. With two microphones, the engineers have been able to adjust the experience by cancelling out background noise.
