Vodafone to offer Nexus S
Mobile telco VHA last night confirmed it would be bringing Google's Nexus S handset to Australia, although the date of the local launch and pricing details remain under wraps for now.
Nexus S (Credit: Samsung)
"Vodafone can confirm the Nexus S will be available in Australia. Pricing and launch details to be announced soon," the company said on its Vodafone blog late last night. It noted that customers would be able to pre-register for interest in buying the Nexus S from 9am this morning. The revelation comes as Vodafone globally revealed the Nexus S would be launched in a total of 24 new countries worldwide.
Speculation has run rampant about whether the hyped handset would land in Australia ever since it was unveiled in early December last year. At the time, manufacturer Samsung would only say that it was excited at the prospect of bringing the device to Australia, and was reviewing its options on how to do so.
When it was first unveiled, the Google-branded Nexus S was hailed as the current top model in Android phones. However, since that time, a flood of new models from up to a dozen manufacturers have been announced at the CES tradefair in the United States.
In addition, a plethora of new high-end devices are expected to be unveiled next week at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona. Telstra chief executive David Thodey is planning to attend the event, where the telco's partnership with HTC to launch its flagship Desire handset was unveiled in 2010.
The Nexus S has similar specifications to other high-end Android handsets currently on the market, such as the HTC Desire HD, also sold by VHA in Australia. It comes with a 4-inch WVGA, super AMOLED screen running at a resolution of 480x800 and using capacitive touch technology. It utilises a 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) CPU, and comes with 16GB of onboard memory, and a 5-megapixel back-facing camera, as well as a front-facing VGA camera for video calls.
However, unlike its competitors, the Nexus S runs the latest Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system, which adds features such as an updated user interface, support for near-field communication (used for mobile payment technology), and support for video calling and Google TV. It also features a slightly curved screen designed to fit to a users' head in a more comfortable fashion than the traditional flat screens of other mobile devices.