Well, by now you’ve probably heard the news that Google has said for sometime would never happen: the Internet oligarch officially unveiled the Google Nexus One, a Google-branded mobile phone. This follows weeks of clever marketing that had the blogosphere in a tizzy. Yes, that’s right, a Google-branded piece of hardware. Of course, The Google says it wasn’t fibbing all along, as technically the phone is made by Taiwan’s HTC (which means this phone will break the instant I put it in my pocket and walk out the door, but that’s another story). But it is a Google phone; you can only buy it from Google. We in journalism have a term for this tweaking of the truth: “marketing and PR.”

But that’s neither here nor there. Google fan boys and girls are excited; the iPhone fan peeps are a little anxious and probably a little sulky, and you just want to know about the phone. As previously mentioned, it’s made by smartphone maker HTC, but fortunately for Nexus One buyers, it doesn’t have HTC’s proprietary, pain-in-the-butt USB headphone jack, but a regular 3.5mm jack (can you tell I’ve had HTC phones in the past, and have mixed feelings?).

It’s got all of the features one would expect in a top of the line smartphone these days; no surprises there. But there are some things to note about the hardware:

• 1GHz processor (Qualcomm QSD 8250 aka Snapdragon)
• 512 Mbytes of onboard RAM
• 512 Mbytes of onboard flash memory
• 4 Gbyte MicroSD card included (expandable to 32 Gbytes)
• 3.7-inch, 480 x 800 pixel AMOLED touchscreen

The processor and the fat onboard memory means this phone should be the fastest thing out there; those specs put everything else at the moment to shame. The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display is also notable, as it should be much brighter and crisper than most other phones on the market right now (typically color LCDs) – maybe a little too bright, according to Engadget.

The other thing notable about the hardware is that the pone looks pretty cool despite the fact that HTC designers were involved. No fugly bastard BlackBerry, this Google phone. Oh, and for those of you that worry about such things, the phone is lighter and thinner than both the Moto Droid and the latest iteration of the iPhone (oh noes, Apple fan boys!). Nexus One weighs in at 130 grams and is 11.5mm thick; the iPhone is 12.3mm thick and weighs 135 grams. By comparison the Droid is a beefcake at 169 grams and 13.7mm thick.

And as if the mere existence of the phone weren’t enough for the Google fans out there, Nexus One boasts Android 2.1, which apparently won’t be available on other ‘droid phones for awhile.

As far as positioning, naturally the phone has assisted GPS, as well as both cellular and Wi-Fi positioning capability. The Nexus One also throws in a digital compass and accelerometer.

As linked previously, Engadget already has a Nexus review up; here is Google’s own pages dedicated to the Nexus One. If you want one, it costs $529 to get this quad-band GSM phone unlocked, or $179 with a two-year contract on T-Mobile here in the United States. The Google says a WCDMA version is forthcoming for Verizon’s network (which will no doubt make everyone who shelled out for the Droid rather cranky), but didn’t give a specific date.

Update: Xeni Jardin is my Hero

I can’t believe I didn’t catch this, but props to BoingBoing for fielding it. Where did the name Nexus come from? Most likely from some marketing roundtable consensus, but possibly it’s an homage to the replicants (or should we say … wait for it … androids?) of Blade Runner, the Riddley Scott take on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and one of my favorites, even though it is only loosely based on the novel.  If you recall the movie, it was the Nexus-6 models that go bonkers and it falls to Harrison Ford to chase them down.

True story: I saw Sean Young more than once at a gas station in Sedona, Arizona, back when I used to live there many moons ago.

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