Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

As of yesterday one can now pre-order Google’s top notch ‘Droid phone the Nexus One on a Vodafone contract. Before punters could only buy one direct from Google, which unless you had all the cash spare in one go hasn’t been easy for those looking on a subsidised contract.

Available in stores on the 1st May if you pre-order online you could receive it a day earlier. The cheapest contract deals start at £25 for a 24 month contract and obviously different deals and prices are in effect as to what minutes, text and data allowance you can get.

To top that off, it is believed that Android 2.2 or “Froyo” as it’s being named should be available in May, or so rumours suggest. It has also been said that the Nexus One will be the first phone to get the OS upgrade too. This has come about from apparent phones spotted online, surfing the web using what is more than likely a test of Android 2.2. Couple this with the fact Google are having a conference at the end of May and hopefully that’s when we’ll get the details.

Hopefully all the older droid phones still not running 2.1 will get a quicker upgrade.

HTC were busy yesterday in Barcelona showing that the new boys in town mean business with a bunch of great phones will be hitting our shelves in the coming months which will make you think twice about getting an iPhone or Nokia.

The Nexus One appeared to be the next best thing but didn’t seem to live up to the task with reported faults and poor reviews, however HTC have come up with the Desire. Now basically it looks like a Nexus but HTC have said its got a “different construction” basically I think that means they’ve ironed out the problems.

Running Android 2.1 with a 3.7” OLED screen being run with Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon it has also been given HTC’s new optical trackpad. The main difference however is the UI. Flash Lite 4 software, a little menu that pops up in it’s browser allowing cut/copy/paste/translate and wiki text to mention a few tweaks. This phone will be available on Vodafone(who announced shortly after the release of the phone it will be carrying the three HTC phones we will talk about today) around the April/May time.

Google’s “Nexus One” phone has been stirring up plenty of interest in the past few weeks, not only as Google’s next big phone after the slightly disappointing one that was on T-Mobile not so long back (apparently this is the phone that should’ve been) and the apparent lack of originality in the name(according to the Philip K. Dick family estate saying they stole it from the author’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? AKA Blade Runner). However all this aside a little birdie(a Voda spokesman to Engadget) let slip that the release will be “imminent” and should be shipping “within weeks”

The UK will be the first country in Europe to receive the Nexus One with the rest of Europe having to wait till later in the year.

The Nexus One is a collaboration between HTC and Google and from what we’ve seen it looks nice and on paper looks………nice!!! Powered by Snapdragon, OLED touchscreen, 5MP camera, Android 2.1 OS(animated wallpapers, lovely window transitions……..nice!) This could really be the next best rival to the iPhone. Hopefully when we get the full officialness we can let you all know the exact prices and dates!!