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Rumour: Google Nexus Prime first Ice Cream Sandwich phone, made by Samsung featuring a Super AMOLED HD display

Ice Cream Sandwich, coming this winter, looks set to be the one OS to rule them all; its main aim is to unify the Android smartphone and tablet features providing a more universal user experience, similar to what you get when using an iPhone and an iPad.

We’re certainly interested in seeing Honeycomb features like 3D widgets and the new Gmail app being integrated/tweaked for Android smartphones. We’re also keen to see how it makes the user experience between devices less (whisper it) ‘fragmented’.

With a winter 2011 ETA for ICS, we’ve been keeping an eye out for rumours of a new flagship Nexus device, something big and powerful to showcase the new version of Google’s OS.

Boy Genius Report’s Jonathan S. Geller cites an unnamed source claiming that the first Ice Cream Sandwich phone will be called the Google Nexus Prime and will be made by Samsung.

This monster of a smartphone reportedly will feature a 720p-resolution screen (!) and run on an OMAP 4460 processor; a dual-core 1.5GHz chip made by Texas Instruments. Sounds terrifyingly good doesn’t it? Films downloaded from Google Movies would look incredible on a screen like that.

Halo Moto

Interestingly, Gellar’s source hints at Google working with multiple carriers and phone manufacturers to create multiple “halo devices”, that would be exclusive to specific carriers in the US; so there could be as many as four Nexus-branded phones released at any one time.

If true, we’re wondering how these four Androids of the apocalypse would fare in the UK; would we see one assigned to a specific network – O2, Vodafone, Three with Orange and T-Mobile sharing one under the Everything Everywhere name?

Obviously any 4G Nexus phones launched Over There would need to have their innards changed for a UK launch, in the same way that HTC’s Evo 3D – today announced for European markets, first released in the States – did and the Nexus S 4G did before that.

Also, this move would deviate from how the Nexus range has been sold in the past – i.e. not tied to any specific carrier, although Vodafone ended up selling both the Nexus One and the Nexus S.

The launch of a high-end Nexus range of devices, all overseen/worked on/with by Google, also seems to deviate from the spirit (if not the letter) of what Android is all about.

What about a Nexus Tablet?

Then there’s also tablets to consider; we’ve been keeping another ear to the ground for mutterings of the first Nexus tablet. The current rumour doing the rounds is that LG will be making a Nexus tablet, a rumour which originated from a post by Mobile-Review’s Eldar Murtazin.

That rumour first surfaced back in March this year and we’ve not seen anything concrete that suggests LG is working on an ICS tablet since.

Ice Cream Sandwich is all set to be the great unifier, and so to demonstrate the great bringing of Android tablets and phones together, we can see why Google would want to work closely with Manufacturer X on a phone and Manufacturer Y on a tablet.

This recent news on the Nexus Prime gives us something to think about between now and when Google takes the wrapper off of Ice Cream Sandwich.

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