If the Samsung Galaxy Nexus doesn’t do it for you (and for many, it doesn’t) there’s always the next Nexus to look forward to. But if you were hoping for an HTC, Motorola or ASUS phone to bear Google’s developer branding, you may be out of luck. DigiTimes reports that Samsung has won the bidding to become the manufacturer of the next Nexus, probably due late this year or in early 2013. Samsung has made the past two Nexus devices, the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S, while HTC made the original Nexus One back in January of 2010.

Treat this story with caution, dear readers – DigiTimes has a well-earned reputation for jumping the gun, though their predictions turn out to be true about as often as they aren’t. With that warning out of the way, Samsung makes sense as the makes of the next developer device. Google and Samsung have gotten very close over the last couple of years, and implementing Android has helped Samsung to become the top phone maker on the planet and rival Apple in smartphone sales.

Even so, some of us were hoping for something different. For all the Galaxy Nexus’ charms there are still a few sour spots, starting with the Samsung-centric name and ending with poor reception and battery life on the Verizon LTE version of the phone. Many had thought that Google’s new ties to Motorola would make them an easy choice, but it looks like that doesn’t give them a leg up. ASUS is strongly rumored to be creating a “Nexus Tablet” for Google to sell directly (probably via the brand-new hardware section of the Google Play Store) but their relative inexperience with smartphones may have put them out of the running.

In any case, DigiTimes’ story says that the phone hasn’t even reached the early stages of development yet. It’ll be many months before rumors of the next developer device begin coming to light in earnest, whoever’s making it.

[via AndroidAndMe]

26 COMMENTS

  1. This is kind of disappointing, I was looking forward to either Motorola or Htc nexus :-(….

    Hoping this rumor is false

      • The fact that it’s a new phone makes it different already regardless of who the maker is. It’s another opportunity for something new and different.

        With that said, I’m glad it’s Samsung again. IMHO they make the best Android phone. I like the idea of LG being tapped at somet point. They make good phones that fly under the radar. Motorola would be decent too, but htc would just crap out something ugly as usual.

      • Yeah I see your point. I was just saying that even if it’s the same brand as before, they’re obviously going to go for something different the next time around.

  2. I also do hope the rumor is false. The last Galaxy Nexus build coming from Samsung was a big disapointment. HArdware-wise and OS-integration-wise. I used it for four month and user experience was really bad.
    I hope Motorola, HTC or Sony will do the next Nexus. Or LG, why not? But Samsung, they should focus on their plastic makes!!!

    • If you’re blaming the user experience on a Nexus device, that means that is the fault of Google since they’re the ones creating the plain Android experience.

    • If you dont like the user experience…through a custom ROM on there! There are tons of different options out there, I still use my og droid from time to time because of the ROM! (I switch between a og droid, a bionic, and a gnex(for dev shit))

  4. Whoever it may be, I just hope they decide to add a slot for a microSD card for expansion purposes. That’s the only gripe I have about my GNex.

    • Same here, but that’s actually not Samsung’s fault. For a couple of reasons Google’s engineers working on Android prefer internal storage to external flash usage but I would gladly go back to having extensible storage as a standard feature again.

    •  I’d like them to bring back mass storage mode. Nuts to this MTP crap. Let me put whatever I want onto my phone how I want.

  5. I’m sure they’re listening to customer complaints…or at least Samsung is. Google still has a big say on what goes into the phone. Still, Samsung has definitely been taking note of customer complaints about past phones feeling “cheap” because of their plastic construction. The new S3 is going to be made out of ceramic materials.

    Let’s hope they’re also bringing in bigger batteries and more power efficient processors.

    • Samsung is not listening to any thing proof they keep dropping crappy touch wizard on there great devices.. also they seem to make there own phones better then the nexuses proof the inferior screen on nexus s and galaxy nexus vs the galaxy s2 and s3. I say go back to HTC I had a g1 loved it and I still use a nexus 1 I hope they don’t use Samsung again the s2 and s3 are great but they half ass the nexus if the only they would dumped touch wiz. No microsd either come on

  7. Tell u the truth I would love to have HTC make the next nexus since I love my nexus one but I recently got the pure google GSM galaxy nexus and its pretty nice .. I mean the feel compare to nexus one ain’t all that but Samsung did a pretty good job. Nd all nexus phones are the best imo

  8. I’m excited to upgrade my NS when my 2 years is up in December. This phone has been awesome though, so I’m patient.

  9. i would like to see a remake of the nexus s 4g. with andriod 4.04 it runs like a champ. everything is smooth and havent had a single crash since the upgrade. i would only like to see a bit more power and ram. and i would give up both of those options for double the battery life and same performance.

  10. well if samsung makes the phone stop putting cheap speakers in it, and put some descent ones that have sound that compares to the quality of other major smart phones out in the market and put a sdxc card slot that it accepts a 64gb sd card in it google, not everyone has quality cellular service everywhere. Also, if your on a plane you don’t get a cellular service, a sd card slot would be nice.

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