Samsung Nexus S

The first phone to ship with Android 2.3 also known as "Gingerbread" as the well as the follow-up to last January's Nexus One, the Nexus S is a joint effort between Samsung and Google with some impressive features. The hardware is gorgeous, and Android 2.3 delivers some useful enhancements.

The Nexus S's design the glossy, all-black Nexus S is a lot more attractive than the Nexus One. In construction a lot flimsier and more plasticky than its HTC counterpart. Measuring 4.9-by-2.5-by-0.43 inches thick, the phone is a bit larger than the Nexus One. Weighing 4.5 ounces, the Nexus S is lighter than its sibling.

The Nexus S a 4-inch Super AMOLED display. The display is also curved so as to fit more comfortably next to your face.

Google apps like Latitude, YouTube, Gmail, Places, Google Maps with Navigation, Search (with voice), Car Home, Google Talk, and Google Voice.

The music player remains the same as the one in Froyo--boring but easy enough to use. Videos downloaded to the phone played back smoothly and looked great on the Super AMOLED display. One of the nice things about Super AMOLED is that it remains pretty visible in bright, outdoor sunlight. If you like catching up on TV shows during your lunch break, this is a useful quality in a phone.

The Nexus S has a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and the same resolution as the rest of the Galaxy S pack.

It has autofocus, macro and infinity modes, four resolutions to choose from, nine scene settings, three color modes, three quality modes, and exposure metering.

Can shoot video as high as 720-by-480-pixels at 30 frames per second. The device has 512MB of RAM and is capped at 16GB of internal memory. And unlike the iPhone, there's no 32GB model available.

Powered by Samsung's 1GHz Hummingbird processor, the Nexus S is quite speedy. Scrolling through Web pages was fluid, applications opened quickly, and navigating around the menus was smooth and fluid. Call quality over T-Mobile was very good. Calls sounded crisp and natural with an ample amount of volume and no static.