Today both Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and a new handset, the Nexus S, was announced by Google. The Nexus S is made by Samsung and follows the idea behind the "pure" Nexus One, released a year ago, in that it is the clean Android experience without any operator customisations. Samsung had a runaway success with their Galaxy S series and the Nexus S is an evolution of that line. Its packing quite a punch too - for starters, it supports NFC (Near Field Communication) , which by an amazing co-incidence so does this new version of Android. Expect to see lots of activity around this in many areas, such as contactless payments. Even though its been around a while there hasn't been any mainstream adoption yet - has the market been waiting for a big player to make such a move?
The new handset with be available in the US from Best Buy (Dec 16th) and in the UK from Carphone Warehouse (Dec 20th) - just in time for the holiday season. You can buy it either unlocked or with a carrier plan.
The CPU is a 1Ghz Cortex A8 Hummingbird and it sports 16G RAM - but theres a curious deviation from the Nexus One in that there is no SD card. It has 2 cameras, front and rear (the rear one being 5Mp), a 4" WVGA (480x800) display of the Galaxy S SuperAMOLED variety.
Theres more to the Nexus S regarding multitouch - notice in this demo 2 fingers are used to tilt the 3D buildings, which some current Android models can't handle as their multitouch hardware isn't compatible:
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