Nearly a year ago, wasn't Motorola CEO that suggested they were next in line for a Nexus? Picture leaks of a new slider phone too?
I always assumed that the phone destined to be the next Nexus ended up being the Droid 2.
Every major Android release since 2.0 has been accompanied by a flagship. Or at least supposedly.
Android 2.0 was followed by the Droid. Pre Nexus era but it was a vanilla Android phone.
Android 2.1 - Nexus One
Android 2.2 - ???
Android 2.2 didn't turned out to be followed by any flagship hosting the vanilla Android. Only an upgrade to the Nexus One. I believe there may have been plans to do such, but following the weak sales of Nexus One, Google lost some clout, while Verizon and Motorola asserted. I believed that the Droid 2 was originally meant to have a vanilla Android version, which was canned, and then turned to the Droid 2 we know by adding Motoblur and Verizonware.
I also believed that HTC was also competing for this spot, and the result is, ta..ta...resulted on the G2. Nexus Two was supposed to be the Android push to the professional market and thus it is planned to have a keyboard. Hence, the sliders that eventually turned out to be both the Droid 2 and the G2.
The G2 follows the same pattern as the Nexus One. First, a vanilla Android version comes out, then followed by an HTC Sense version. Nexus One led to the HTC Desire. G2 led to the Desire Z.
Why the nixing of the Nexus name here? Perhaps it was thought Nexus wasn't marketable anymore, and T-Mobile instead wanted to revive another fabled name of Android history, the G1.
Now comes to Android 2.3, and we have the Nexus S. Which struck me as a surprise because I assumed the next ADP for Gingerbread should have been something based on the MyTouch 4G. Think of the MT4G without Sense and with Gingerbread and you get what I mean. So far the MT4G has no international version, which is odd for an HTC phone, since the MT4G represents the missing member of a possible trio of HTC Androids, with the MT4G based member slotted between Vision (Desire Z) and Ace (Desire HD).
So who will be the flag leader for Android 2.4? The way its sounding the next Google branded device might be a Tegra 2 tablet.
I want Google to pull a surprise saying Nokia would make it. hehe.