Rumor Alert: Android 4.0 Coming to New Nexus Phone, Hardware Buttons Disappear

For mobile developers, one of the greatest challenges is keeping up with the ever-changing nature of hardware platforms. Devices, seemingly overnight, become thinner, lighter, faster, and more powerful. Google has typically offered developers unlocked Android devices, for a fee, and has been known to hand out its “Nexus” phones for free, at times. But there’s always excitement when rumors of the next Nexus phone hits the Web, as these serve as the gold standard for delivering the pure Google experience.

Now, there are hints that a “Nexus 3” is on the horizon, possibly coming from HTC.

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According to a scoop from BGR, the still unconfirmed future Nexus device being called the “Nexus 4G” has the following specs:

A dual-core 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz CPU, either an OMAP 4460 or an ultra low-power 28nm Krait-based Snapdragon
720p HD display
A “monster-sized” screen (uh?)
4G LTE radio
1 GB RAM
1080p HD video capture/playback
1-megapixel front camera/5-megapixel rear camera
Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
No physical Android buttons! Everything will be software-based.

The lower megapixel rating for the camera may be attributable to what BGR says is “class-leading image quality” and “superior low-light performance.” Megapixels aren’t everything, you know. And it makes sense that HTC would be behind the next Nexus phone, considering that the company has, according to CEO Peter Chou, the largest group of Android developers outside Google.

What’s more interesting is the note that it will run Android 4.0, the version which will merge Android Gingerbread (for smartphones) and Android Honeycomb (for tablets) into one.

The reported timeframe for launch – Thanksgiving – makes sense, too, given Google’s official announcement from I/O that Ice Cream Sandwich would arrive “later this year.”

It looks like this fall is going to be an exciting time for mobile industry watchers. We’ll have the commercial release of Windows Phone “Mango,” news of the iPhone 5, and some serious changes to Android all occurring around the same time.

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