With the dust barely settles after Apple announced the new iPhone, or iPhone 4S as it’s known to its friends, the Android world is getting ready to take its moment in the spotlight.
Samsung, manufacturers of Google’s last reference handset and all-round Android fanboys, has released a video of what we can only assume is their latest collaboration with the search giant – and they seem rather excited by it.
The video doesn’t really show us much at all, but there is a glimpse of what appears to be one side of the new device, complete with power button and a 3-pin dock connector of sorts. Is this the next Nexus phone, with Samsung once again being the company Google has tasked with showing Android off in all its glory.
And glory, it shall be. The upcoming Nexus, believed to be going by the Transformers-tastic name of Nexus Prime, is widely expected to be the first phone to launch with Google’s new Android release, Ice Cream Sandwich.
Ice Cream Sandwich as it is becoming known, is the first amalgamation of the smartphone-based Gingerbread OS, and the tablet-based Honeycomb, and is believed to borrow heavily from the latter in the user interface department. Many pundits think that Ice Cream Sandwich could be the beginning of Android’s move to a more user-friendly user interface, with some of Android’s telltale harshness being pushed to the wayside.
The video says that we at least won’t have long to wait before the mystery is over, with Samsung supposedly showing off the handset on October 11th. Just when we think we can stop counting down the days to a smartphone announcement, Samsung goes and resets the clock!
Google’s Nexus phones, or at least the two of them that have already been released, are the company’s way of showing the world what a stock Android device should be like, as well as allowing them to give partners a reference hardware standard. Both the Nexus One and Nexus S have been well received, especially by those wishing to own an Android device without one of the many overlays that hardware manufacturers seem so keen on adding. All Nexus phones come free of such clutter, and hardcore Android fans prefer the vanilla Google approach when it comes to their smartphones.
We’ll have more on the Nexus Prime as and when Samsung shares it with us.
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