Google unveils new smartphone, <b>Nexus S</b>
Internet giant Google fielded a new champion on the mobile phone market battlefield on Monday, a "Nexus S" smartphone made by South Korea's Samsung. Google said the Nexus S, which comes nearly a year after the Nexus One, which was a critical success if not a huge commercial hit, is powered by the latest version of Google's Android mobile operating system, "Gingerbread." Google vice president of engineering Andy Rubin said the Nexus S would be the first Android device to ship with the new version of the Android platform, used by handset makers around the world. "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," he said. The Nexus S will be available in the United States from December 16 from Best Buy stores and from December 20 at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy retailers in Britain, Rubin said in a blog post. The Nexus S will be offered in the United States with a service plan from US wireless carrier T-Mobile or "unlocked," Rubin said. Unlocked Nexus S phones that can be linked to any telecom network simply by inserting SIM cards will be priced at 529 dollars while people opting for two-year service contracts with T-Mobile will get the gadgets for 199 dollars. The touchscreen Nexus S features a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, front and rear facing cameras and 16 gigabytes of internal memory. It is also equipped with near field communication (NFC) hardware that turns the device into a virtual wallet, allowing users to "tap and pay" for financial transactions. NFC chips store personal data that can be transmitted to readers, say at a shop checkout stand, by tapping a handset on a pad. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said last month that he expects the tap-and-pay mobile technology to "eventually replace credit cards." Google launched the Nexus One in January of last year in a bid to challenge Apple's iPhone and the Blackberry from Canada's Research in Motion but closed its online store offering the device just four months later. "The year opened with a bang with Google launching Nexus One and it is going out with a bang with the launch of the Nexus S," said Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg. "The Nexus S will set the stage for what Android devices will look like in 2011." The Nexus line is becoming a product that demonstrates Google's vision of how smartphones can perform with Android software, according to the analyst. "The Nexus S will be Android as Google meant it to be seen," Gartenberg said. "To that degree, the Nexus One was a success; it was a place where you could get a pure Google experience." The Nexus One didn't catch on with consumers but was a hit with software developers and other technophiles. The Nexus S "raises the bar" for other handset makers as Android-based smartphones battle to wrest market share from rivals such as the iPhone and BlackBerry devices.
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