Guest Post: Albert is a developer, gadget geek, and all-round nice guy. He‘s passionate about Android, and writes for ZADroid, a new blog that covers Android in South Africa. However, anything shiny and sufficiently technologically advanced puts a smile on his face. Above and beyond that, Albert loves the web and the technologies that drive it, good design, and original ideas.
Yesterday was a big day for Android. Gingerbread was officially announced, the next version of Android (Hummingbird) was demoed by Andy Rubin on a dual-core tablet at All Things D, and Google unveiled their next flagship phone, the Nexus S.
The Nexus S is is manufactured by Samsung, and is based on the very popular Galaxy S. Obviously, it is the first phone that will ship with Android 2.3 right from the get-go. It has set a new benchmark for Android phones with interesting features like a curved display, dual cameras, 1GHz Hummingbird processor, a whopping 16GB of memory, and Near Field Communication capability. The first review has been extremely positive, but there are one or two things that have people scratching their heads, like the lack of a MicroSD slot, no indicator LED, and a somewhat plasticky build.
Google has also made an official Nexus S site available that has an impressive overview with videos of most of the features.
Here are the specs, directly from the official Nexus S site:
Display
- 4.0“³ WVGA (480×800)
- Contour Display with curved glass screen
- Super AMOLED
- 235 ppi
- Capacitive touch sensor
- Anti-fingerprint display coating
Size and Weight
- 63mm x 123.9mm x 10.88mm
- 129g
Hardware
- Haptic feedback vibration
- Three-axis gyroscope
- Accelerometer
- Digital compass
- Proximity sensor
- Light sensor
Processor and Memory
- 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor
- 16GB iNAND flash memory
Cameras and Multimedia
- Back-facing: 5 megapixels (2560×1920)
- 720 x 480 video resolution
- H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording
- Auto focus
- Flash
- Front-facing: VGA (640×480)
- 3.5mm, 4-conductor headset jack (stereo audio plus microphone)
- Earpiece and microphone
- Software noise-cancellation
Battery
- Talk time up to 6.7 hours on 3G (14 hours on 2G)
- Standby time up to 17.8 days on 3G (29.7 days on 2G)
- 1500 mAH Lithum Ion
The Nexus S will land in the US on the 16th of December, and the UK on the 20th. No word yet whether we‘ll see it over here in South Africa. Samsung has a strong presence in SA, though, so here‘s hoping. If you want some more Gingerbread goodness, you can actually download the Nexus S manual right here.
I really do hope that Google makes the Nexus S available to Africa, in general, as I see huge potential for new, interesting applications from budding entrepreneurs with regards to Near Field Communication. And if we don‘t get the Nexus S, let‘s hope that more and more phones in the future will have this capability by default.
As for the Nexus S itself, seeing as it‘s basically just a spruced-up Galaxy S (click here for review, is already availably here), it won‘t be long until we see a port of Gingerbread for the Galaxy S by the likes of Cyanogen or Modaco.
Once again, 2011 is going to be an interesting year for Android.
Ed: Thanks to the Android guru, Albert Cornelissen from ZADroid for this post!
