Google and Samsung officially announce Nexus S
Google and Samsung finally let the cat out of the bag. Meet the Nexus S, running Android 2.3.
After months of leaks and even a brief public appearance, Google and Samsung made it official and announced the Nexus S on Monday, the first smartphone to run Android 2.3.
The Nexus S will be sold from Best Buy, both online and in stores, and will be available for purchase on December 16. You can buy it unlocked for $529 or with a two-year contract with T-Mobile for $199. If you happen to live in the U.K., the phone will be available from Carphone Warehouse after December 20.
Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread, brings such new enhancements as a improved keyboard with multitouch support, VoIP/SIP support, a cleaner user interface, and support for Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.
The Nexus S does indeed have an embedded NFC chip, which allows the wireless exchange of data between two objects over short distances (around 4 inches). Among the uses for NFC is mobile payments.
The smartphone also features a 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen with a contour design to give the smartphone a more ergonomic feel when held to the user's face, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, a gyroscope sensor, 16GB of internal memory, and a 5-megapixel camera with HD video capture and a front-facing VGA camera.
We expect to hear more today about Gingerbread and perhaps the Nexus S as Andy Rubin, vice president of engineering at Google, kicks off the D: Dive Into Mobile Conference in San Francisco this evening. We'll be there to cover the event, so be sure to check back for updates. In the meantime, you can check out the Nexus S in action in the video above.
What do you guys think? With the smartphone being made available at an actual store, will it be more successful than the
