Google bakes fresh Gingerbread for Nexus One, Nexus S

Google has begun rolling out the latest version of its Android operating system, dubbed 'Gingerbread', to customers using Nexus One and Nexus S smartphones.

The Nexus handsets are the so-called Google-phones, launched as they are by the software company rather than their manufacturers — HTC for last year's Nexus One, Samsung for the new Nexus S. Their status as such means they are the first to get over-the-air (OTA) updates from Google, in this case version 2.3.3 of the smartphone OS.

The rollout was announced through an official Google Nexus post on Twitter early on Wednesday, which read: "Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) update now rolling out to Nexus S and Nexus One. Be patient, may take a few weeks for OTA to complete."

The Gingerbread distribution of Android includes new features such as near-field communication (NFC) support, a refreshed app manager, easier text selection and SIP call support.

The Nexus S actually launched with Gingerbread, but not the new revision of that distribution. This update brings minor tweaks such as the ability to write to as well as read NFC tags, the addition of platform and API support for Bluetooth non-secure socket connections, and enhancements to speech recognition.