Google Unveils Nexus S
Google's latest handset, Nexus S running the latest version of the Android operating system called Gingerbread
Google has come up with some pretty nice services and products throughout the years. While the company is best known for its search engine, the one that most of us use to find stuff on the web nowadays, its mobile phone operating system called Android has grown a lot in the past few years and it’s slowly but surely transforming into the leading mobile OS in the world. Leaving aside the whole army of mobile phones from various brands running Android, we’ve seen one phone made by Google itself. It was called the Nexus One and while it wasn’t a massive success on the market, it was the one handset we could call a Google phone.
For a long period of time people expected Google to come up with a successor for the Nexus One. They assumed it would be called Nexus Two. When asked Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt ruled out the possibility of such a phone. That’s why when the same Mr. Schmidt showed up at the Web 2.0 summit holding a device that was believed to be the successor to the Nexus One, we were all a bit surprised. On the very same occasion Google’s CEO explained that while he said there would never be a Nexus Two, he didn’t say there would never be another Nexus phone. It’s quite clever if you think about it and it did lead some people to believe that the bunch of rumors we got to see on the web were all false.
Well, courtesy of Google’s official blog we’re here today to present the Google Nexus S. As the blog post points out, the first Android appeared on the market in the fall of 2008. A mere two years later over 100 Android devices were shipped to the market. Right now, more than 200,000 Android devices are activated worldwide on a daily basis. Despite this Google has no plans to slow down. In fact, the company has just introduced the latest version of Android called Gingerbread. On the very same occasion we also got to see the Nexus S unveiled. We’re seen the Nexus S before in a whole bunch of leaked photos as well as in Eric Schmidt’s hand at the event mentioned previously.
See, this release has two purposes. First off, developers finally get to try out the Gingerbread SDK/NDK. Second on the list is the fact that the Nexus S is the first device to start shipping with the latest version of Android, namely Gingerbread 2.3. The handset was manufactured by Samsung and the partnership between Samsung and Google should ensure tight integration of hardware and software, placing the focus on the latest “advancements” of the Android OS.
“As part of the Nexus brand, Nexus S delivers what we call a “pure Google” experience: unlocked, unfiltered access to the best Google mobile services and the latest and greatest Android releases and updates” Google stated on its blog. To gain a better understanding of the creation process of the handset be sure to check out the videos embedded in this article.
Naturally, the spec sheet of the phone has become pretty clear and we can now compare it to what we knew previously. The list of features includes : a 4 inch Contour Super Amoled touchscreen display with a native resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and a curved glass screen, 1Ghz Hummingbird processor, 5 megapixel camera on the back with video recording capabilities, autofocus and flash, front camera with a VGA resolution, 16GB of onboard memory and NFC hardware which will allow you to read info from NFC tags. The latter is something we’ve heard the phone would include but to be completely honest we weren’t sure why Google included it and what it was aiming to achieve. The company describes NFC as a fast, versatile and short range wireless technology which can be embedded in a wide variety of objects, from movie posters to t-shirts and much more. The thing is, it isn’t used in pretty much anything on most markets so if you consider buying this phone you’ll probably be better off keeping the feature inactive. The rest of the spec sheet includes: Wi-Fi 802.11 n/b/g, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, microUSB 2.0, 3.5 mm jack, haptic feedback vibration, three-axis gyroscope, accelerometer, digital compass, proximity sensor and light sensor.
Google also took the time to mention that Gingerbread is the fastest version of Android released so far and offers a whole set of improvements which include: user interface refinements, NFC support, new keyboard and text selection tool, improved copy/paste function, gyroscope sensor support and Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling. If it’s a complete spec sheet and all of the features of the phone as well as more photos and videos that you’re looking for then go ahead and see them all gathered on Nexus S’ official page. Apparently the handset will become available quite soon.
After December 16 people will already be able to find it either unlocked or with a contract through T-Mobile. It’ll also be available in store from all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile Stores in the US. After December 20 UK consumers will be able to find it in stores as well (Carphone Warehous and Best Buy). So far we don’t have a lot of news regarding the release dates in other parts of the world. We don’t know the price either but we’ll look out for more information and report as soon as we learn more.
What I’ll personally have to say about the Nexus S is that so far it sounds great. It might not be remarkable in terms of features (processor is not out of this world, camera is the average, most of the features on this we’ve already seen on other phones) but it’s definitely one of the Android handsets you might want to consider buying in the near future.
