Rumor has it that Google and Samsung may be teaming up to launch the successor to the Nexus One, the phone that kicked off all this Android business in the first place. According to Android and Me, Google and Samsung will announce the “Nexus Two” at an upcoming press conference on November 8th in New York.
This would be an interesting move given what Eric Schmidt said about the Nexus One:
The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did. It was so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one. We would view that as positive but people criticised us heavily for that. I called up the board and said: ‘Ok, it worked. Congratulations – we’re stopping’.
This news comes from multiple “trusted sources.” The Nexus Two would run Android Gingerbread (3.0). This would make sense given that the Nexus One always received the latest Android OS updates first. Even after it was no longer available to the public, the device was available for developers for testing.
The real question here is why Google would bother with another phone in the Nexus series. The Nexus One primarily served as a template for manufacturers and carriers. Just as Google has done in other areas, they needed to push the envelope a little to show everyone what was possible and get them interested in the Android brand.
Now that Android OS has gained popularity, we are seeing interesting things happening around it. Everyone and their grandma is opening up their own Android app store. Beyond skinning the phone, HTC is trying to completely co-opt the Android brand. They call it a “holistic experience filled with moments of delight” and don’t even want you to call their devices Google phones.
It’s possible that Google may be trying to preserve the purity of Android by having at least one device out there not tainted by the motivations of the carriers and manufacturers.
What do you think?
via TheNextWeb, Android and Me