The smart phone is the epitome of the consumerisaton of IT, and the power that the consumer now has to choose their own device.
And when it comes to choosing devices the new Nexus S from Google is likely to feature highly on wish-lists.
First of all, Google has neatly sidestepped a problem that hampered previous devices in the high end space. The Nexus S is manufactured for Google by Samsung, developers of the Super AMOLED screen that gives superb colour, depth, clarity and critically, high visibility in bright sunlight. As Samsung are the main suppliers of SAMOLED screens, those who wanted them but fell foul of recent manufacturing shortages, are still likely to be at the back of the supply chain queue-kudos to Google then in partnering with Samsung.
As regards overall capability, the two key developments in this phone in the wider context are Near Field Communications (NFC) and Android 2.3, known as Gingerbread.
NFC is the protocol that allows the device to act as a wallet-cum-credit card to allow you to simply swipe your phone near an NFC reader to pay for things. When widely adopted by retailers and service providers, this is likely to be a well used feature.
Gingerbread, or Android 2.3, is a major upgrade under the hood for the now almost ubiquitous smart phone operating system (OS). When combined with the 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor, Gingerbread gives a very fast, responsive and high performing system to run increasingly complex applications.
With the first Nexus smart phone, Google decided to go direct, but when there were initial support problems that required a level of interactivity with users, the inability of Google to meet these needs seems to have prompted a greater engagement with carriers for the S. Vodafone has launched the phone in Ireland, with Carphone Warehouse, free for high value monthly plans, and going up to €109.99 (including an online discount) for entry level bill pay customers, but worth noting is that all of these are based on an 18 month contract. However, Vodafone has said that to celebrate the launch, it would be “offering all new bill pay customers and qualifying upgrades this smartphone from free, until 31 March 2011.” This makes the phone a significant amount cheaper than comparable devices such as the HTC Desire HD, or the iPhone 4.
The Nexus S is fully featured in terms of its connectivity, with quadband GSM, triband HSPA, Wi-Fi (including 802.11n), Bluetooth, Assisted GPS and the standard microUSB hard connection.
The screen is a 4″ or 100mm WVGA display with a high viewing angle and thankfully, a fingerprint resistant finish. There is 16Gb of storage, with 512MB dedicated to system RAM.
The Nexus S also features haptic feedback, three axis gyroscope, accelerometer, digital compass and proximity and light sensors, meaning that all those little apps that are so popular from bubble levels, to compasses and games are well accommodated.
The battery is a Lithium Ion 1500mAH unit that is quoted as giving 6.7 hours of talk and up to over 17 days on 3G standby. What that translates to in terms of blended usage remains to be seen.
The camera is a modest 5MP unit with autofocus and flash but it can shoot HD video at 720p using the H.264 and H.263 MPEG4 CODECs.
While the Nexus S does not introduce too much in the way of revolution, in Gingerbread, the Android OS is maturing into a very capable, robust and, critically, secure platform that will certainly encourage its adoption in business. As such desirable devices are acquired by business people, increased security capability will be a relief to beleaguered IT managers tasked with making them work without increasing an organisation’s attack surface.
We will expand this with a hands on review as soon as we get hold of a device.
www.vodafone.ie * www.google.com/nexus
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