At a press event today in Mountain View, Google officially announced its own smart phone designed to work on the Android platform, the Nexus One. Calling the device a "superphone," the company said it partnered with device manufacturer HTC to create a phone to demonstrate "what's possible on mobile phones through the Android platform."

Mario Queiroz, a vice president of product management at Google, said "one of the questions we asked ourselves some time ago is what if we worked more closely with our partners to bring devices to market to showcase very quickly the great software that Google is building."

The suggestion seems to be that some type of heavyweight device is needed in order to run Android as Google intends.