“When I first saw it from 10 feet (3m) away, I thought it was the Galaxy S,” says our source, who got to handle one. “I was a little surprised it was the Nexus Two”, because it’s so different from the Nexus One.
It’s black and shiny, built with glossy plastic. Up close, though, it’s “got this curve to it”. While the screen, which our source thinks is the same 4-inch AMOLED affair from the Galaxy series, is flat, the front is “sort of concave” with hard edges. And the back is curved. The tapering makes it feel thinner than Galaxy S, though it might be about the same thickness. “It feels really similar to the Galaxy S in a lot ways.” (Note: Our mockup is very approximate.)
Externally, the main difference from all of the current Galaxy S variants in the US is that it’s got a front-facing camera, and it’s running a stock build of Android that was still “really buggy”. (Update: Forgot about the Epic 4G, which has a front camera.) Our source wasn’t sure if the internals were any different. Google’s supposedly trying to build video chat into Gingerbread, using the same protocol as Google Talk. So it makes sense that the flagship phone for the next year – the one that most Googlers will probably be developing on – comes with a front-facing camera, even if video chat doesn’t quite make it into Gingerbread.
At first blush, it’s a little disappointing that Google possibly isn’t pushing things forward in the same way they did with the Nexus One, since it seems like the Nexus Two is a refreshed Galaxy phone. On the other hand, it says a lot that the Android ecosystem is so stocked with high-powered phones, from the Evo to the Droid X, that even Google won’t radically jump ahead of its partners with a new flagship. Hopefully their plan for selling it is a little better.
G
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 11:19 AMfinally something that MIGHT keep me from straying from android… but lets just see how it goes.
StevoTheDevo
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 11:36 AMHow awesome would it be if it’s a just a Galaxy S with some slight mods and SGS gets Vanilla Android as well?
Too much to hope for I guess but even so!
matt
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 11:51 AMzomg! galaxy S without crap Samsung UI??
Tom
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 12:47 PMHow reliable is this source of the story? What about it confirmed it to the source that it’s the Nexus Two? Seems a little odd that Google wouldn’t push a more unique design for their flagship Android phone.
Ve
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 2:53 PMAs opposed to the nexus one which looked absolutely nothing like an HTC desire?
pdf
Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9:17 PMExcept the Nexus One came first…
Ward Paterson
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 12:55 PMIf it suffers from the same freaking RFS lag that the Galaxy S does, then forget it.
I can’t believe Google have gone to Samsung. Couldnt have picked a worse company for software updates and support…
Google = NFI
Treggs
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 1:21 PMIf it is getting vanilla android, then we wont have to wait for samsung to update. Straight from google :)
Hopefully the internals are near enough to identical to my galaxy so when gingerbread and latter land, my galaxy can rock the stock roms. :)
Also if it is similar hardware then Gingerbread may not be far away…
ThePengwin
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 1:23 PMIf this is branded as a Google Nexus phone, then i think Google will be handling all the software for it, and are just hiring Samsung to make the hardware.
HTC didn’t touch the N1 software, so i really don’t think Samsung will touch the N2′s OS.
moggyx
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 1:43 PMDude, the lag is caused by Samsung’s proprietary filesystem they place with the Galaxy S distribution containing TouchWiz, etc. A stock android release would contain no sign of this bottleneck and would truly unleash the SGS hardware.
What is really exciting/interesting is that this would be the first release of Android that would be optimised to perform on a similar chipset to the iPhone 4.
Maybe this alone would be reason enough to make Samsung the next Nexus Phone creator. Once they release the source code, you can bet the guys at XDA will port that beautiful vanilla flavoured ROM to the SGS!
Anthony Tam
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 2:01 PMGoogle, what was wrong with your HTC partner? Together with HTC influencing the next GoogleOS from its Sense UI experiences you two could have made a beautiful sequel.
Hope it’s not another Samsung Galaxy S, my one (with front facing camera) is very very laggy.
pdf
Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9:20 PMThat’s pretty much entirely a filesystem problem, and it looks like Samsung have actually ditched their RFS filesystem (redundant, I know) for the i9200, judging by the firmware. Actually, could the phone the article’s source saw actually be the i9200??
J-man
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 2:39 PMI received my SGS from Telstra under 48 hours ago and I’ve already flashed it to Froyo and installed the Voodoo lagfix. It’s pretty damn awesome and if we can get onto vanilla roms on a regular basis provided by google, that would be the icing on the cake. It definitely shites me that Samsung have taken so long to get Froyo out and fix the GPS and filesystem errors, but since the way Samsung make their cash is by selling us hardware, it’s no wonder they don’t really give a toss.
The move to google directly supplying us with upgrades can’t come soon enough. :)
Steve
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 3:49 PMI too am kinda disappointed this wasn’t made by HTC. I think they produce the best Android phones on the market (excluding maybe Dell’s new ones)
Stefan
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 7:27 PMMaybe what google does is they contract each major company into creating a new phone for them everytime they decide do make a new OS update. That would be wicked siiick!
hmmmm
Sunday, October 31, 2010 at 2:11 PMSo we can expect about a million different variants of it too. One for each different network. Im confused with the galaxy models as it is already! Probably also means Australia will get shafted with the more average model too. As we already are with the galaxy.