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Google’s upcoming Tuesday press conference is likely to mark the debut of the Nexus One, the search company’s own Android-based smartphone.

Nexus One should showcase the latest generation of the Linux-based open source Android operating system. It’s also the first phone that is expected to be directly marketed by Google, setting higher expectations for the phone.

Here’s what we know about the phone so far.

Hardware

The Nexus One was designed by HTC, which has a close relationship with Google. HTC created the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, and has released at least five Android handsets since the operating system launched in October 2008.

Though packed in a big, white box with the Google logo printed prominently, the Nexus One clearly shows the stamp of HTC’s design sensibilities. Photos show a device similar to the HTC Droid Eris phone with its trackball and four buttons at the bottom of the phone.

The Nexus One has a 1-GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 display, 512 MB of of RAM and an expandable 4-GB microSD card, says Engadget. The 1-GHz processor alone should make the Nexus one of the fastest smartphones available currently.

By contrast, the Palm Pre has a 600-MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor and the Motorola Droid runs a 550-MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor. Click here to read more.. »

LAS VEGAS – AT&T Inc. is adding cell phones running Google’s Android operating system to its lineup, bringing what could be the iPhone’s greatest rival into the fold of the device’s sole U.S. carrier.

AT&T’s head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega, said Wednesday that AT&T plans to sell five Android phones from Dell, HTC and Motorola during the first half of this year. De la Vega was speaking at an event Wednesday ahead of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Android is shaping up to be the strongest challenger to Apple Inc.’s iPhone — more than 30 million of which have been sold in the past 2 1/2 years.

With AT&T’s announcement, the four largest U.S. wireless carriers will offer phones running Google’s software. There are about 20 such phones on the market, including ones made by Motorola and HTC and Google Inc.’s own Nexus One, which was announced Tuesday.

Also Wednesday, De la Vega said AT&T will sell phones running Palm Inc.’s WebOS operating system in the first half. Palm offers two phones with that software, the Pre and the Pixi. Both have been offered in the U.S. only by Sprint Nextel Corp.

Dell has already built versions of its phone, called the Mini 3, for carriers in China and Brazil. Its efforts to expand to the U.S. market is part of its effort to diversify. Its main customers, U.S. corporations, have slowed spending on technology since the economic meltdown of 2008. Once the largest PC maker in the world, Dell has slipped to third behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Taiwan’s Acer Inc. The one bright spot in the business, the consumer PC division, has become less profitable as people have leaned toward inexpensive portable computers.

Calling it their “superphone,” Google unveiled the Nexus One on Tuesday, marking the online search giant’s first leap into the smartphone market.

The phone, which goes head to head with Apple’s darling of the market, the iPhone, is sold only through a Web store operated by Google and, unlike the iPhone and most other current smartphones, is available either with or without mobile service.

“We are very happy to be able to offer a choice,” said Mario Queiroz, Google’s vice president of product management.

T-Mobile is the initial service provider. Verizon in the United States and Vodafone in Europe will be coming on board later, and more operators are expected.

Already available Tuesday, the phone costs $180 with a contract or $530 unlocked, leaving the phone open to other carriers.

Among the Nexus One features Google announced at an invitation-only event at its California headquarters was text without typing. A voice-enabled keyboard allows users to send texts, e-mails or Facebook updates by speaking into the phone.

It is a global-system device with a 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, an accelerometer and a compass, according to Google. Click here to read more.. »

A year after its release, Google’s open source Android operating system has become a sensation. After a slow start, it is now available on at least 12 phones, with more devices waiting in the wings.

Good news for Android fans, right? Not really, say some developers. A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a “nightmare,” they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models.

For users, it means apps in the store could be buggy, might not work well depending on their handsets, and could deliver a frustrating experience. Unaware of the increasing back-end complexity, they would then be more likely to leave bad reviews for those apps — a potentially lethal blow for small businesses, say developers.

“Instead of working on updates to our apps, we find we are trying to make each app work for multiple versions of the OS and different hardware capabilities,” says Chris Fagan, co-founder at Froogloid, an Android focused application development company. “We are not complaining about all the growth, but if you are a small or a new Android developer coming in and trying to learn I could see your head exploding. It would be overwhelming,” he says. Click here to read more.. »