You sure took your time Rachel. We’ve been waiting for you. Finally you have arrived, all officially like. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Android phone is a first for the company.

It packs a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, a large 4 inch touch screen display, an 8.1 megapixel camera and of course, the Rachel interface that everyone thought was the name of the phone. The XPERIA X10 will not be available until next year though. By the time it does show up it should be one of the fastest phones on the market.

You might recall that sweet Android-powered eBook reader from Spring Design called the Alex that we talked about last month. Spring Design has filed a suit against Barnes & Noble over its recently announced Nook eReader for alleged IP infringement.

According to Spring, it was in talks with Barnes & Noble to partner to distribute the Alex when executives at Barnes & Noble misappropriated the trade secrets and violated the non-disclosure agreements in place between the two firms. Spring claims that Barnes & Noble made no indications of using the features of the Alex reader in its own product until the Nook was officially announced.

What with all of the Droid excitement, it’s easy to forget LG’s GW620, LG’s first Android smartphone. And so you won’t forget about it, the LG GW620 now has its own mini-site. The page appears to be a work in progress, but there are two video demos, some stock photos, and the user manual and spec sheet for download.

The GW620 will be a dualband UMTS (900/2100) quadband GSM device, with WiFi and Bluetooth. It has either 2GB or 4GB of internal storage, along with a microSD card slot, and a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash. The touchscreen is a 3-inch HVGA resistive panel, while the OS is Android 1.5 Cupcake with LG’s own S-Class UI running on top.

Looks like both TomTom and Garmin might be having a bit of a bad day to put it mildly, thanks to the announcement of Google Maps Navigation. As the graph shows, things are not looking good. Nope. Not at all.

GPS makers can at least take some comfort in the fact that the new Google Maps Navigation is available on Android 2.0 at the moment, which requires you to have a specific phone to download the maps real time. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Google has unveiled Maps Navigation (beta), an upgraded version of the current Maps software that will be free and apparently available on all Android 2.0 devices. You get all of the usual Maps features, along with being able to search by the name of a business and it will even suggest the closest matches and traffic data.

There’s also turn-by-turn navigation with a female robotic voice and integration with satellite and street view. Street view will be able to show you what lane you need to be in when exiting the highway, for instance. It will also now search along the route when you’re looking for gas stations or fast food. Some addresses can be added to the Android home screen as icons too.

The Motorola DROID will hit Verizon on November 6th for $199 on contract. That’s after a $100 mail-in rebate. The DROID itself is the first of many Android phones coming to the carrier. There’s Android 2.0 of course, Visual Voicemail, a 3.7-inch display (854 x 480 resolution), 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, a bundled 16GB memory card and a beta version of Google Maps Navigation.

The DROID is the first phone to offer that last, which which will turn Google Maps into a turn-by-turn routing system. Some other features include a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi, voice-activated search and over-the-air Amazon MP3 downloads.

We don’t have much info. Just a small image and a few specs at the moment, but it looks like NEC is working on a mobile business tablet PC that looks to be Android based. The touchscreen tablet has a 7- to 8-inch LCD display and NEC is apparently predicting that they’ll eventually ship over 1m of the UMPCs each year. So they seem pretty confident.

We don’t even have a name for the device yet, but it’s set to go on sale in Japan this fall. NEC is boasting that it’s a fast-booting device with heavy use of cloud-storage and cloud-computing “capable as a personal computer”.

We have been fielding robots of all sorts on the battlefield for a while now, typically associated with finding and disposing of bombs and other explosive devices. I always thought when Android’s hit the battlefield they would be packing laser cannons and the visage of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Apparently, the first Android to hit the battlefield will be in the form of Google’s open source OS and cheap computer terminals.

Raytheon has announced its RATS battlefield networking system will be powered by Android. The system will allow troops in the field to coordinate with other combatants and gain access to other assets. Presumably, these other assets would include air strikes and drones.

T-Mobile is continuing its Android assault with the CLIQ. The MOTOBLUR-running, physical keyboard phone is now available for current T-Mobile customers for $199. New subscribers have no choice but to wait until November 2nd to get one.

What are you waiting for. Get one. Some users are saying that it outdoes the G1 in nearly every way. What think you Brick readers? Is this the Android phone you’ve been waiting for? Let us know.

The Alex looks similar to the Android-powered Barnes & Noble reader, but this one sports a 6-inch display using monochrome e-ink (not color), but it also has a secondary 3.5-inch color touchscreen that lets you browse the Web.

Yeah, VERY similar to that Barnes and Noble reader. Spring Design claims that it’s “enlisting major content partners, and plans to release the Alex for selected strategic partners by the end of this year.” Interesting.

Verizon has launched a smack-talking offensive against the iPhone, with a new campaign called DroidDoes.com for their upcoming Motorola Droid Android smartphone. The handset, previously known by its codenames of Tao and Sholes, is being promoted as offering everything the iPhone can’t: an open development platform, the ability to run background processes, a flexible open App Store and replaceable batteries, etc. They really do some trash talking. Verizon has even set up a countdown timer showing that the Motorola Droid will arrive on October 30th 2009.

The teaser site starts off with some statements, all using the familiar i-prefix and in an Apple-style font. Stuff like “iDon’t run simultaneous apps”. Then a countdown page, with specs of the upcoming Motorola smartphone.

Acer looks like they mean business in the cell phone market, having officially announced the Acer Liquid, Acer’s first Android-powered smartphone. This is truly something to drool over, as it will be powered by Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor. It will be the first Android-device to use the processor. Liquid=drool.

This one features a high-definition WVGA capacitive touchscreen, and will be powered by Android 1.6. We don’t have an official release date or pricing info yet, but that info should drop soon. We’ll let you know.

I am not a big fan of alternative OS’; I prefer to use what I know and what my software works with in the form of one flavor or another of Windows. I do admit that Android has my interest piqued and I would like to play with the OS a bit. If you feel the same way, the Acer Aspire One with Android and Windows XP is available for pre-order now.

Amazon.com is offering the netbook for pre-order at $349.99 with free shipping. That is a great price considering the machines has both Android and Windows. Other specs include a 10.1-inch screen, Intel Atom N280 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB HDD.

HTC has now launched its TattooMyHTC service that allows customers to customize their HTC Tattoo smartphone starting at €11.99. It’s the first Android smartphone from HTC with removable covers (remember Nokia faceplates?).

A pre-made design will start at €11.99 but if you want to use your own design you will have to add another €3. You can make it however you like it. TattooMyHTC is available only for the HTC Tattoo, but more devices might be added later if HTC makes new handsets with changeable covers.

The Archos 5 Internet Tablet has been available for just a couple of days, but now Amazon has stopped all orders for the 160GB hard drive-based Archos 5 device, placing the item “under review.”

Amazon says that “customers have told us there may be something wrong with our inventory of the item”. This is not good news for Archos. However, the 32GB flash-based version is still available for pre-order. Hopefully the issues, whatever they are, can be fixed quickly.