The Nexus S is a

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

co-developed by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

and

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

and manufactured by

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC; stylized as SΛMSUNG; ) is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is curr ...

for release in 2010. It was the first smartphone to use the Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" operating system, and the first Android device to support

Near Field Communication Near-field communication (NFC) is a set of communication protocols that enables communication between two electronic devices over a distance of or less. NFC offers a low-speed connection through a simple setup that can be used for the boots ...

(NFC) in both hardware and software. This was the fourth time that Google worked with a manufacturer to produce a phone, the previous being the Google G1,

myTouch The T-Mobile myTouch or myTouch series is a product line of private label smartphones manufactured by HTC, LG and Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinatio ...

and the

Nexus One The Nexus One (codenamed HTC Passion) is an Android smartphone designed and manufactured by HTC as Google's first Nexus smartphone. The Nexus became available on January 5, 2010, and features the ability to transcribe voice to text, an add ...

, all three by

HTC HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t), or High Tech Computer Corporation (abbreviated and trading as HTC), is a Taiwanese consumer electronics corporatio ...

. Following the Nexus S, the next Android Developer phone was the

Galaxy Nexus The Galaxy Nexus (GT-I9250) is a touchscreen Android smartphone co-developed by Google and Samsung Electronics. It is the third smartphone in the Google Nexus series, a family of Android consumer devices built by an original equipment manufact ...

, released the following year. Nexus S is the first commercial smartphone certified by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

to fly on the

space shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

and to be used on the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

, as part of the

SPHERES The Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellite (SPHERES) are a series of miniaturized satellites developed by MIT's Space Systems Laboratory for NASA and US Military, to be used as a low-risk, extensible test bed for t ...

experiment.

History and availability

The Nexus S was demonstrated by Google CEO

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...

on November 15, 2010, at the

Web 2.0 Summit The Web 2.0 Summit (originally known as the Web 2.0 Conference) was an annual event, held in San Francisco, California from 2004 to 2011, that featured discussions about the World Wide Web. The event was started by Tim O'Reilly, who is also widely ...

. Google officially announced the phone on their blog on December 6, 2010. The phone became available for purchase on December 16 in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and on December 22 in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. The

Super AMOLED AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode; ) is a type of OLED display device technology. OLED describes a specific type of thin-film-display technology in which organic compounds form the electroluminescent material, and active mat ...

version of the phone is the GT-I9020 and it is based on the

Samsung Galaxy S The Samsung Galaxy S series is a line of Android-based smartphones and tablet computers produced by Samsung Electronics. It serves as Samsung's high-end line of its wider Galaxy family of Android devices and in conjunction with the foldable Gal ...

hardware, the principal hardware differences being the absence of support for an

SD card Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of portable consumer electronics, including dig ...

and the addition of a near field chip. The alternate SC-LCD (Super Clear LCD) version of the phone is the GT-I9023 which is meant for the European (non-UK) market. In May 2011

Sprint Sprint may refer to: Aerospace * Spring WS202 Sprint, a Canadian aircraft design *Sprint (missile), an anti-ballistic missile Automobiles *Alfa Romeo Sprint, automobile produced by Alfa Romeo between 1976 and 1989 *Chevrolet Sprint, a rebadged v ...

introduced its Nexus S in the US. Unlike the GSM version, the Sprint Nexus runs on its

WiMax Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMA ...

network and uses CDMA instead of GSM. Also in March 2011 Vodafone released a white version of the phone on its web store in the UK. In the United Kingdom, the Nexus S is sold at

Carphone Warehouse Carphone Warehouse is a mobile phone retailer based in London, United Kingdom. In August 2014 the company became a subsidiary of Currys plc (previously named "Dixons Carphone"), which was formed by the merger of its former parent Carphone Wareh ...

and is available on the Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile, 3 and Orange networks. In

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, it is available through

SFR SFR S.A. (or Altice France S.A. for the group) (; ) is a French telecommunications company. It is both the second-oldest mobile network operator and the second largest telecommunications company in France, after Orange. The group, Altice Fr ...

and

Bouygues Telecom Bouygues Telecom S.A. () is a French mobile phone, Internet service provider and IPTV company, part of the Bouygues group. It is the third oldest mobile network operator in France, after Orange and SFR, and before Free Mobile, and provides 2 ...

. In

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, Samsung officially announced sale of the unlocked version with Super Clear LCD screen i9023, which will support all GSM-based carriers throughout the country. In

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, the Nexus S became available at most carriers in April 2011 in two versions, one for Telus, Bell, and Rogers with 3G frequencies of 850/1900/2100 MHz, and the other for Wind/Mobilicity/Vidéotron, using 3G frequencies 900/1700/2100. In

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, the Nexus S became available in both black and white. It is available on Vodafone and its virtual provider

Crazy John's Crazy John's was a mobile phone retail chain in Australia started by Turkish Australian businessman John Ilhan. Crazy John's was the largest independent phone retailer in Australia, employing more than 400 people with more than 600 retail stor ...

Hardware

Processor

The Nexus S has the Samsung Exynos 3110 processor. This processor combines a 45 nm 1 GHz

ARM Cortex A8 The ARM Cortex-A8 is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. Compared to the ARM11, the Cortex-A8 is a dual-issue superscalar design, achieving roughly twice the instructions per cycle. The Cortex ...

based

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

core with a

PowerVR PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies (formerly VideoLogic) that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, video decoding, decoding, associated image processing and DirectX, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and ...

SGX 540

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

. The CPU core, code-named "

Hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the Family (biology), biological family Trochilidae. With approximately 366 species and 113 genus, genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but most species are found in Cen ...

", was co-developed by

and

Intrinsity Intrinsity, Inc. was a privately held Austin, Texas based fabless semiconductor company; it was founded in 1997 as EVSX on the remnants of Exponential Technology and changed its name to Intrinsity in 2000. It had around 100 employees and supplied ...

. The GPU, designed by

Imagination Technologies Imagination Technologies Group Limited is a British semiconductor and Computer software, software design company owned by Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a private equity fund based in Beijing that is ultimately owned by the Chinese government. ...

, supports

OpenGL ES OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerate ...

1.1/2.0 and is capable of up to 20 million triangles per second.

Memory

* The Nexus S has 512 MB of RAM (

Mobile DDR Low-Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR), also known as LPDDR SDRAM, is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) that consumes less power than other random access memory designs and is thus targeted for mobile computing devices such ...

) (128MB is assigned to the GPU, leaving 384MB free for the OS), * 16 GB of NAND memory, partitioned as 1 GB internal storage and 15 GB "USB storage". * The phone does not support additional storage capacity such as

microSD Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary hardware, proprietary, non-volatile memory, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of port ...

Screen

The Nexus S is the first device to use a slightly curved glass touchscreen, described by Google as a "Contour Display", with a

800 x 480

WVGA WVGA may refer to: * Wide VGA, 800×480 graphics display resolution * WVGA (FM), a radio station (105.9 FM) licensed to Lakeland, Georgia, United States * WSWG (TV), a television station (channel 43) licensed to Valdosta, Georgia, United St ...

PenTile PenTile matrix is a family of patented subpixel matrix schemes used in Electronic visual display, electronic device displays. PenTile is a trademark of Samsung. PenTile matrices are used in AMOLED and LCD displays. These Pixel geometry, subpixel l ...

matrix display manufactured by Samsung. In markets outside Canada, US, and UK, a

Super LCD Super LCD (SLCD) is a display technology used by numerous manufacturers for mobile device displays. It is mostly used by HTC, though Super LCD panels are actually produced by S-LCD Corporation. Super LCD differs from a regular LCD in that it d ...

is supplied instead.

Software

The phone shipped with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and was the first device to ship with the updated OS. On December 19, 2011, Google released Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) for the Nexus S. The automatic update was suspended, allegedly due to poor battery performance. The UMTS/GSM variants was among the first to receive Android 4.0.4 in March 2012. Th
Nexus S 4G
aka Samsung SPH-D720), I9020A, and M200, while taking longer than the GSM variant, received the Android 4.0.4 update. Several devices, such as the

Samsung Galaxy S II The Samsung Galaxy S II (also unofficially known as the Samsung Galaxy S2) is a touchscreen-enabled, Slate phone, slate-format Android (operating system), Android smartphone developed and marketed by Samsung Electronics, as the second smartphon ...

, have or will receive updates before these variants. On June 27, 2012, at the

Google I/O Google I/O, or simply I/O, is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. The name "I/O" is taken from the number googol, with the "I" representing the first digit "1" in a googol and the "O" representing the s ...

conference, it was announced that the Nexus S would be one of the first devices to receive an upgrade to Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), along with the

Motorola Xoom The Motorola Xoom is an Android-based tablet computer by Motorola, introduced at CES 2011 on January 5, 2011. It was the first tablet to be sold with Android 3.1 Honeycomb. The Verizon branded Xoom was the first tablet to run Android 3.1. The ...

and

, began on July 26, 2012. In October 2012, the Jelly Bean 4.1.2 OTA update was released, and is the last official OS released for these devices. On November 13, 2012, it was announced that the Nexus S would not be updated to Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). Using third-party ROMs, Android 4.2.2-, 4.3-, 4.4-,

5.1 5.1 surround sound ("five-point one") is the common name for surround sound audio systems. 5.1 is the most commonly used layout in home theatres. It uses five full-bandwidth channels and one low-frequency effects channel (the "point one"). Dolb ...

-, and 6.0-based software can be installed.

postmarketOS postmarketOS (abbreviated as pmOS) is an operating system primarily for smartphones, based on the Alpine Linux distribution. postmarketOS was launched on 26 May 2017 with the source code available on GitHub before migrating to GitLab in 2018. ...

can also be installed, but is unstable.

Variants

See

Unlocked

The Nexus S cannot be sim locked and has an unlockable bootloader, allowing users to install custom ROMs.

Critical reception

Joshua Topolsky, writing for ''

Engadget Engadget ( ) is a technology news, reviews and analysis website offering daily coverage of gadgets, consumer electronics, video games, gaming hardware, apps, social media, streaming, AI, space, robotics, electric vehicles and other potentially ...

'' review praised the devices's hardware and software, concluding "the truth is, it really is the best Android device available right now". The review by ''

The Register ''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...

'' gave the Nexus S an 85% rating and summarized it as a "cool, innovative device with an eye to snatch Apple’s smartphone crown." An

AnandTech ''AnandTech'' was an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in April 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who was CEO and editor-in-chief until August 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief. ...

review praised the display,

NFC NFC usually refers to: * Near-field communication, a set of communication protocols for electronic devices * National Football Conference, part of US National Football League NFC may also refer to: Psychology * Need for cognition, in psychol ...

tag reader, and Android Gingerbread operating system, but noted the lack of 720p video recording,

HSPA+ HSPA may refer to: * High Speed Packet Access, a mobile broadband technology * Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association Education * High School Proficiency Assessment * Humphrey School of Public Affairs, an American public policy school * Hunte ...

baseband, and external storage support. A

TechRadar ''TechRadar'' is an online technology publication owned by Future plc. It has editorial teams in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia that provide news and reviews of tech products and gadgets. It was launched in 2008 and expanded t ...

review praised the Nexus S for fixing the GPS problems experienced with the

: "The good news for those looking to upgrade from the Samsung Galaxy S – the GPS issues have been resolved, in that you can actually now get a signal with no problem." CNET's review was enthusiastic about the display, operating system, and performance. CNET noted the lack of 720p video recording, HDMI output and external (

) memory support. CNET also noted the "rather fragile" feel of the phone, the lack of LED notifications, and the few new features over the

References

{{Linux devices Android (operating system) devices Google Nexus Mobile phones introduced in 2010 Discontinued flagship smartphones Samsung smartphones