Google's Nexus One gets FCC clearance

A trickle of information about a looming "Nexus One" Google phone has turned into a flood over the weekend, with the phone getting official confirmation and then being pictured in use. Well, now we have a bit more - it's passed FCC clearance and is going to be running Android 2.1.

In the FCC filing is a few more details about the handset. It's got a model number of PB99100 and is being built by HTC. It has microSD card expansion, 802/11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and HSDPA and it'll run on both European and US networks.

It'll also be running Android 2.1, which we don't yet have many details of, other than that it might be called Flan. From the photos of the Nexus One, however, we now know that there's 3D elements in the app tray, an extended amount of homescreens and Google has nabbed some of the card functionality from the Palm Pre's webOS to display those homescreens.

Lastly, there's the question of the name of this thing. The Nexus One shares a name with Sony Ericsson's "Nexus" skin for its Android phones, which is a bit like HTC's "Sense" and Motorola's "Motoblur" - adding a little extra functionality on top of the Android base.

We gave Sony Ericsson a call, who told us that the two products are in no way related. That could present an issue for the phone manufacturer, especially if the Nexus One takes off in a big way, as some predict that it might. Either consumers get confused, Sony Ericsson has to rename, or Google has to rename - none of which are good things.

We'll keep an eye on that situation as it develops and let you know.