[Update] Best Buy: The Nexus S is Real, Would've Been Headed for T-Mobile First
Say what you want about the swing and miss regarding recent rumors of Samsung and Google bringing out a “Nexus S” to trump the current Nexus, but we've heard a lot of stories from a lot of sources suggesting it's real.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Nexus line has been circling back into view for weeks: PC Magazine reported more details on a rumored Samsung-built 'Nexus Two' in late October, and today Best Buy's involvement turns rumor into near-confirmation — with multiple sources telling Android Phone Fans the device is real. The same-day pickup by Gizmodo, Engadget and GigaOM shows how much attention the successor to the phone behind the first leaked Nexus One photos commands.
What has changed is the distribution story. The Nexus One launched as Google's experiment in selling an unlocked flagship straight to consumers — an approach that even spawned talk of an AT&T variant before fizzling. Per the reporting, the Nexus S would land on T-Mobile first through conventional retail, and GigaOM frames it as Google playing it safe rather than groundbreaking.
First-order effects
- Samsung inherits the reference-device mantle from HTC, making its hardware the canonical Android build that developers and carriers calibrate against.
- T-Mobile gains launch exclusivity it never had with the Nexus One, while Best Buy becomes the storefront for a program Google previously ran through its own web store.
Second-order effects
- Other carriers lose the leverage they had when any Nexus buyer could bypass them entirely, pushing them back into competing for exclusive Android launches on subsidy terms.
- Rival handset makers face a Samsung-branded pure-Android flagship at retail, raising pressure to differentiate their own skins and carrier bundles rather than compete on stock Android.
Third-order effects
- If the Nexus S ships through carriers and retail instead of Google's store, the direct-to-consumer experiment is effectively retired, and future Nexus devices become conventional carrier launches wearing a Google halo.
- A 'safe' Nexus also narrows what the program is for — less a showcase for radical hardware, more a guaranteed-update baseline that anchors Android's fragmentation problem.
The trend: Google's Nexus program is pivoting from a direct-to-consumer hardware experiment to conventionally distributed, partner-built flagships, with carrier and retailer channels reasserting control over Android's flagship launches.