The Galaxy Nexus, as you know, is the first smartphone to offer Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as its operating system. That does away with the physical buttons at the bottom of the device, replacing them with on-screen icons instead. There are all sorts of other goodies, like the extra large 4.65-inch Super AMOLED 720p display and integrated NFC, as well as better multitasking.

As far as the Verizon part of the equation goes, Big Red is selling the Samsung Galaxy Nexus for $299.99 on a qualifying two-year contract. There’s a “limited time promotion” on right now that gives you double the 4G LTE data for free. The $30 option with 2GB of data, for instance, gets bumped to 4GB. Naturally, you need a voice plan too. Up here in Canada, the Galaxy Nexus is being sold through Bell and Virgin, though I imagine Telus and Rogers should be joining the ICS party at some point too.

[Update]: Verizon has put up the official Galaxy Nexus page as of 1:30PM PST.

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His name is David Fayram and he is a senior software engineer at CrowdFlower. He just waltzed into Best Buy, asked for the phone, and bought it from a store employee who sold it to him “by accident.” It’s also said that some other folks have had some luck getting their hands on the Galaxy Nexus ahead of schedule from Verizon stores too.

Fayram reports that this is a “cutting edge phone, without the ostenation and outrageous materials of the Droid Razr.” Sadly, it is loaded with some Verizon bloatware, including My Verizon Mobile and Verizon Migration Assistant. It’s still the “pure” Google experience, I suppose, but bloatware brands the phone beyond that Verizon stamp on the back. To be fair, Canadians can already get the Galaxy Nexus from Bell and Virgin.

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It might be revealed as Android 2.4 or maybe Android 4.0, but whatever the case, Ice Cream Sandwich looks like they took Honeycomb and shrunk it down to smartphone proportions. You get the same kind of launcher for seeing your most recent apps, for example, as well as a similar interface for going through the settings and thumbing through your list of apps.

While these are just still screenshots, you can tell that there are going to be some animations in place for page swipes and similar transitions. You’ll also notice that, like Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich has “soft” on-screen buttons for back, home, and recent apps, which will likely lend itself to smartphones that start abandoning the physical buttons (or touch-sensitive buttons) for those functions. This could lead ot bigger slates and thinner bezels.

I think it looks great and hopefully it’ll help with some of that Android fragmentation that’s going on.

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Before you get all worried about bugs and other issues related to either the handset or Ice Cream Sandwich, it’s worth noting that the delay doesn’t really have to do with the products themselves. Instead, a Samsung spokesperson says that it’s out of respect for Steve Jobs: “We believe this is not the right time to announce a new product as the world expresses tribute to Steve Jobs’s passing.”

It’s still quite possible that Samsung and Google are just taking advantage of the situation to put in some final tweaks and alterations, but we can’t say for sure. In any case, we won’t have to wait that much longer, because Google did promise that Ice Cream Sandwich (and the next Nexus phone) would launch before November. Eric Schmidt wouldn’t renege on that commitment, right?

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We’re pretty sure it’s coming. We’ve known about it for months and it looks like its announcement is just around the corner. And attempting to steal some thunder away from the somewhat disappointing iPhone 4S unveiling is Samsung, which just released a teaser for its Nexus Prime superphone. Yes, something big is coming.

The relationship between Apple and Samsung is getting more and more sour by the day and the timing of this teaser furthers that sourness. The Samsung Unpacked event is set to take place next week in San Diego and it is there that we assume the Nexus Prime will be revealed. The teaser video really tells us nothing other than some things go well together and, based on the final image, the Nexus Prime will have a similarly curvaceous screen as the Nexus S it follows.

Tech Crunch is reporting that the Galaxy Nexus may be a Verizon exclusive, at least for the time being when it launches October 11. Luckily it will run on Ice Cream Sandwich which will be able to reportedly able to track data use on an app-by-app basis.

Following the rumors, we can expect the Samsung Google Nexus Prime (which might be called the Galaxy Prime or Galaxy Nexus) to be the first smartphone with Android 2.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, an OS that marries the smartphone-centric Gingerbread with the tablet-friendly Honeycomb. We’re also hearing about a dual core 1.5GHz processor and plenty of other heavy-hitting horsepower, but just like the iPhone rumors leading up to yesterday’s event, they’re just rumors for the Nexus Prime too.

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Back in June, we reported on the Google Nexus Prime and how this third iteration in the Nexus line would bring several quantum leaps to the Android ecosystem. Now, many of those rumors are getting substantiated and backed up by way of a new report from Electronic Times of Korea.

The report echoes what we had heard before. The Google Nexus Prime will be the first Android smartphone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (sometimes referred to as 2.4), a blended OS that’s supposed to bridge the gap between smartphone (currently up to 2.3 Gingerbread) and tablet (currently up to 3.2 Honeycomb). The report also confirms the presence of a super speedy 1.5GHz processor, possibly by way of Qualcomm.

And this is going to be superphone-sized with its 4.5-inch 720p Super AMOLED HD display with a PenTile layout. With such a large screen, high resolution, and high-speed processor, you’ve got to have a concern or two about battery. Given the Super AMOLED, it’s safe to assume that this is going to be Samsung-produced device, much like the current Nexus S. I guess it won’t be until the fourth Nexus that we’ll see a Motorola-sourced smartphone bearing the “official Google phone” moniker.

Look for the Nexus Prime this October, alongside that other phone from that other guy.

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That’s at $40.00 per share in cash, which is a 63% premium to the closing price of the stock as of last Friday. This completely changes the smartphone landscape. Google was “just” the software side of the equation with Android, but now it’s invested into the hardware side too. As a result, it may have gained that “complete end-to-end stack” advantage that Apple has held to date. To be fair, RIM has that “advantage” too and it hasn’t been so hot lately.

With Google buying Motorola, we could start to see some sticky situations with other Android handset makers like HTC and Samsung. The acquisition lends itself to one hand paying the other. The Nexus One was made by HTC and the Nexus S is made by Samsung… but now are we to assume that the next Nexus phone will necessarily be a Motorola creation?

Considering that the big G will still have over $20 billion in cash remaining after this deal, maybe they’re not done shopping just yet…

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The official successor to the Nexus S is coming with all sorts of rumored specs and features, perhaps the most notable of which is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. After all, it is through the Nexus family of phones that we’ve seen most of the major upgrades to Android, aside from the tablet stuff with Honeycomb. Naturally, the rest of the specs are pretty darn impressive too.

One of my gripes about the Nexus S was a lack of a dual core processor. That’s not a problem with the Nexus Prime, as it’s said to rock a 1.5GHz dual core courtesy of Texas Instruments (OMAP4460). That gets backed up by a hefty 1GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity, “Super AMOLED HD” display with 720p, and a PowerVR SGX540 graphics accelerator. OMAP4 chips are said to support up to 1080p HD recording and playback, in addition to up to 20MP stills. On a bloody phone.

That said, if Samsung is indeed the manufacturer, they could stick with their in-house dual-core Exynos chip instead, the same processor used in the Galaxy S2. You’ll also notice the lack of physical buttons, as those are integrated into the mobile OS instead.

All of these features sound awfully sweet, but there’s going to be at least one spec that’ll likely have you weeping: battery life. With Super AMOLED HD and a 1.5GHz dual core, I’d imagine you’ll be reaching for a wall outlet every 20 minutes. In any case, the current rumor mill points toward a Thanksgiving 2011 launch for the Nexus Prime, if that is indeed its name. Roll out.

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