Google launches Nexus S with Android 2.3

Google has today unveiled its second smartphone onto the market, along with the updated version of its mobile operating system.

The Nexus S comes just under a year after Google's first foray into the handset market with the Nexus One. It will be the first device to ship with the Android 2.3 mobile OS codenamed Gingerbread before it eventually rolls out to other Android-based mobiles.

Features of the phone include a four inch contour display' designed to slip nicely into your hand or curve around your face, two cameras one front and one rear facing, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor and 16GB of internal memory.

"As part of the Nexus brand, Nexus S delivers what we call a "pure Google" experience: unlocked, unfiltered access to the best Google mobile services and the latest and greatest Android releases and updates," wrote Andy Rubin, vice president of engineering, on the Google blog.

The Nexus S will arrive on UK shores on 20 December four days after the US release and be available from either Carphone Warehouse or Best Buy.

It will be available exclusively on Vodafone contracts from 35 per month or at a pricey 549.95 SIM free.

After the rocky release of the Nexus One back in January due to unwise decisions in its route to retail, chief executive of the company Eric Schmidt claimed a second handset would not be coming from Google.

In an interview with The Telegraph, he said: "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."

In response to suggestions that criticism would follow, he added: "I called up the board and said: 'Ok, it worked. Congratulations - we're stopping.' We like that flexibility, we think that flexibility is characteristic of nimbleness at our scale."