The Nexus One became available for sale on January 5th. The Nexus One Desktop Dock accessory was on sale a little over 3 weeks later, on January 27th. Finally on April 6th, almost exactly 4 months after the release of the phone, Google has announced that the car dock is available for purchase.

We were teased with glimpses of the car dock in Google’s Nexus One video series ‘The Story’, specifically in the 5th video titled ‘Day One’ (embedded below).

I’ve yet to find any reviews of the dock, but I suspect we should see quite a few by the end of the weekend. Google seems to be pretty quick when shipping anything Nexus One related, so those who ordered the item on the 6th should start receiving their packages shortly, based on their shipping method. I’m excited that I can finally get rid of my $5 generic phone/mp3 dock for an official, Google sanctioned piece of hardware, but I’m less than thrilled about having to drop $55 in order to do so.

Things get really confusing when you start digging into the car dock’s manual and help site. Google seems to be tip-toeing around the issue of how you’ll get the audio out of your phone and into the stereo. They mention that there is a built-in speaker, and that it can be used for media playback, turn-by-turn navigation, and speakerphone, but really, who would want to listen to their music through a speaker built into a dock? I’d be interested to see how this actually plays out once people start getting their hands on the device.

Otherwise, the dock should basically function like the desktop dock. It provides a cigarette lighter adapter that plugs into the dock itself and sends juice to the phone via metallic contacts, just like the desktop version. Upon mounting the phone, the dock will also launch the Car Home program which should allow for easier access to the phone's functions while driving.

It seems the phone will use bluetooth for the transmission of audio to the dock, which has already caused concern amongst users because it will interfere with those who would prefer to use bluetooth headsets rather than the speakerphone.

I plan on picking one of these up myself as soon as I can and will be back with a full video review and write up – provided I don’t wrap my car around a tree while fondling the touch screen.

Google Nexus One car dock