More developments/rumours in and about the Nexus Prime/Ice Cream Sandwich phone story, both of which originate from social media messages; a post on a Google+ Facebook fan page (read: not official) and a pair of tweets from Samsung Mobile Romania’s twitter account.
The first perhaps makes for the most interesting read, but it perhaps less reliable as it comes from a fan page and not an official Google spokesperson.
The crux is thus; that the third Nexus phone, called the Nexus 3 is being made by HTC and will feature a Google+ button, in a similar manner to how the ChaCha and Salsa feature Facebook buttons.
Unsurprisingly, we got a straight up “no comment on rumour and speculation” from HTC when we spoke to them.
While it’s entirely possible that HTC is a front-runner for making the next Nexus phone, this also reinforces what we’ve heard earlier – that Google may be working on more than just one Nexus phone to showcase Ice Cream Sandwich.
Boy Genius Report’s source hinted at the possibility of multiple ‘halo phones’ made by different handset makers. So while HTC might be soldiering on with the Nexus 3, it’s possible that Samsung is working on the Nexus Prime at the same time.
Speaking of the Nexus Prime, we then saw this curious message over on Phandroid, which came from Samsung Mobile Romania’s Twitter.
Taken at face value, this message appears to be official confirmation of the phone, but Samsung Mobile Romania, or whoever’s in charge of the account later backtracked, claiming it was a discussion based around this article on go4it – which links back to BGR’s original piece on the Nexus Prime.
Still, “Yes, next Nexus will be Samsung,” does sound like a confirmation – perhaps a poor choice of words, if the discussion was indeed about the previously known rumours. We’ve asked Samsung here in the UK for a comment on this and are waiting to hear back.
We’re still not sure about a phone with a dedicated Google+ button though. Obviously Google has big plans for its recently launched social network and we’d be surprised if Google+ functions weren’t integrated into Ice Cream Sandwich.
But it’s early days for Google+ yet – is the search giant that confident in the long term success of Google+? Again, we’re pretty skeptical of this information coming from an unofficial source (on Facebook as well – why not announce it via Google+?). But we were a bit skeptical about HTC making ‘Facebook phones’ – and look what happened there.
Via: Phone Arena
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