The Nexus S: Unadulterated Android

The Nexus S: Unadulterated Android

By Harry McCracken | Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:12 pm

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Google Nexus S

Price: $529 (unlocked)

Hey, I forgot to mention: I reviewed Google and Samsung’s Nexus S smartphone for TIME.com. (Executive summary: best Android phone I’ve seen, nice hardware, the latest and greatest version of Android in uncontaminated form–but the OS still needs more polish.)

With the iPhone, you can be reasonably confident that there will be only one new model a year–and that the current model will be the best available iOS phone. (Of course, if the iPhone lands on Verizon soon, decisions will get trickier.) With Android, things move far more quickly–there are 172 available Android handsets so far (as of last week). And a whole bunch of handsets have had the honor of being the best single Android phone to date, usually for very brief periods. To me, the Nexus S is the current best single Android phone to date–but I’m not making any bets on how long it’ll hold the title.

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