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Galaxy Nexus reappears in Google Play store

After the temporary lifting of a pretrial ban on U.S. sales of the device, the smartphone is once again available for purchase on Google Play.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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  • Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.
Edward Moyer
Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET

The harried Galaxy Nexus smartphone is again available for purchase in the Google Play store.

iPhone, left, Google phone, right.

On June 29, a judge in a lower court granted Apple's request for a pretrial injunction against U.S. sales of the Samsung-made, Android-running smartphone while the court determines whether the device infringes the patents Apple claims it does. Samsung appealed, and the appeals court temporarily lifted the ban yesterday, while it deliberates on whether to dump the ban altogether.

Apple, however, may be able to convince the court to reinstate the injunction while the legal proceedings roll on; it has until Thursday to submit its arguments on that score. How long it will take the court to mull over those arguments of Apple's is unknown.

In the meantime, Google had yanked the phone from the Google Play store, saying it would reappear shortly, running the latest version of Android -- 4.1 or "Jelly Bean" -- which Google says doesn't infringe the Apple intellectual property.

The Google Play listing says the Galaxy Nexus will have Jelly Bean "soon." So it may be the temporary lifting of the ban that's responsible for the smartphone's reappearance in the store. In any case, the listing says the phone won't ship for two to three weeks, by which time it may have Jelly Bean installed.