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The Nexus One -ultimate betrayal for Microsoft

It's being called "the ultimate Google phone" - another HTC-built design based on Android. And while the world discusses whether this is, finally, the real iPhone killer, the most miserable team in mobiles will be Microsoft's.

The phone appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas after one of the most sustained marketing hypes of the comms business. It's not possible to say "no surprise" because there are new features to reveal from the launch, but pretty much, all the speculative stories have been confirmed.

Already, there are reviews from lucky journalists like Joshua Topolsky which have been based on pre-production samples, suggesting that this is not a super-phone, but good enough to be taken as the best Google-authorised handset so far. Topolsky found the 1 GHz Snapdragon struggled to manage all the software, and hinted at battery problems if you want to talk for extended periods, but otherwise, returned a "ho hum" sort of verdict.

The "buy it here" sites will probably not reflect his scepticism, and you can expect some very excited reviews over the next week.

All this will be misery upon misery to Microsoft, which sees HTCs partnership with Google as the worst sort of treachery. Micrsoft, after all, pretty much created HTC's phone division - the company was High Tech Computers when Microsoft first approached them with an offer.

The man who is probably laughing loudest, would be Sendo founder Hugh Brogan. Brogan had signed up with Microsoft to give Redmond its start in phones. "They didn't know how to make a phone. Neither did HTC. We told them how to do it, and they gave all our know-how to HTC" he complained when the first Microsoft smartphone, the SPV, appeared. A lawsuit was threatened.

The close, chummy relationship that developed between Peter Chou, ceo of HTC, and the Microsoft mobile team, is well and truly over. They'll probably work together when the MWC exhibition gets under way next month in Barcelona, but behind the scenes, Microsoft phone staff can barely mention HTC without spitting.

Equally, HTC knows that if it plans to ever rival Nokia, it has to have a more successful partner than Microsoft and Windows. And if Google carries on delivering headlines like these, HTC will feel it backed the right horse...