The new Android Racer from ZTE is now officially launched exclusively with 3. The handset will be available on prepay for less than 100 pound. 

The prototype of the Android Racer was revealed back in April of this year, and is the first ZTE handset operating with Android that is under £100. It will retail to the public at £99.99. 

It seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to the industry, as reported on the Mobile Choice Today website, that the new handset is running on Android 2.1. Éclair. What this means to the user is that they have the pleasure of enjoying multi-touch capability, as well as the capacity of voice-to-text in all text fields. There is also a 3D photo gallery and live wallpapers. 

The basic handset boasts a 2.8-inch resistive QVGA touchscreen, and a very respectable 3.2MP camera. There is 256MB of internal memory, and it incorporates Bluetooth and 7.2Mbps HSDPA capabilities. 

As the Android Racer is a Google Android phone, users can choose from a range of apps from the Android market. Users can access a range of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Spotify and Twitter and have access to a load of games and navigational aids. 

It was first thought back in April that the Chinese manufacturer would be using Android 1.6 as the operating system, given the low entry level price of the new handset but the company has surprised the market. The ZTE Android Racer is expected to become available at the end of July and will be exclusive to 3. 

You know how we'll know when we're living in the future? When user manuals for gadgets start leaking out before that gadget even officially exists. Oh, that's now. Welcome to the future!

If you're just itchin' to know all the right places to touch the Droid 2, you're in luck: the user manual has just leaked out.

Unearthed by DroidLife, the guide confirms some interesting tidbits:

• If you were hopin' for vanilla, untouched Android.. sorry! From the screenshots, it looks like it's running the same build of Motorola's MOTO BLUR interface as the Droid X.
• The screenshots look oh-so-Android-2.2ish, with a handful of hints indicating that this thing will ship with Froyo out-of-the-box.
• Like the Droid X before it, it looks like the Droid 2′s on-screen keyboard will be multitouch. It'll also come pre-loaded with Swype.

You can find the link to the full user manual here. Find any other gems lurking within its pages? Let us know in the comments below.

Up until now HTC devices have been sold across China under the Dopod brand (Dopod being a subsidiary of HTC). However, the Taiwanese company decided that its name, HTC, is already popular enough in China to start selling there HTC-branded devices. And the Android-based among them will feature Android’s latest Froyo right out of the box.

I’m not sure when exactly the first HTC-branded phones for China will show up but one thing is for certain: they will know how Froyo tastes. And those might also turn out company’s first devices to feature the latest so far Android version.

As the HTC website reveals, the China-loving HTC Desire, HTC Wildfire as well as the TD-SCDMA-compatible HTC Tianyi will run the Android 2.2 with the Sense UI on top of it.

Twitter for Android the "official" Android Twitter client  just got another update (this version is v1.0.2), and changes include the following:

• Is faster than the previous version
• Auto refresh is now added
• People search is fixed

It's good, it's simple, but it's still not as good as other Twitter clients out there.