AT&T locks its latest Android phone -- the Aria -- out of sideloading apps, too

(AT&T Aria, left, and the Nexus One)

Here we go again, folks. The HTC Aria -- AT&T's second and arguably best foray into Android -- is limited to only loading applications from the Android Market. As you can see in the screen shot above, the choice to load apps from "non-Market" sources is missing, meaning you won't be sideloading from other websites or -- once Android 2.2 is released -- directly from e-mail, which is very cool.

And this isn't the first time we've seen this. As you'll well remember, the Motorola Backflip is hobbled in the same way -- it's a limitation inflicted by AT&T and is not inherent to the phone itself. We still don't like calling the phone crippled (OK, I don't like calling it crippled, others disagree) because of this, as the rest of it works just fine. But we will say the following:

More on the Aria coming up, folks.