The Nexus S: a closer look

Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed the world the Nexus S from a distance just a little while ago, but we knew you'd want more, and so we managed to convince the man to show us the device in person just a few minutes ago. What should you know about the heir apparent to the Nexus One? Well, it's exceptionally thin -- we weren't able to compare, but we'd say it's at least comparable with an iPhone 4 if not slimmer still -- and it's thinner in the middle than at either end, giving it a mildly concave profile. There's a glossy plastic bezel up front housing an AMOLED screen, a pair of discrete volume buttons on the left side, and a black plastic back (textured similarly to the BlackBerry Bold, though patchier) which seemed too roughly manufactured to be anything but a prototype. We saw the handset for all of three seconds and weren't able to snap a single picture nor touch it for ourselves, but as Schmidt walked away he left us with one last lingering look at Gingerbread -- the screen shutting off. When he pressed the power button, the image winked out like an old CRT TV, an animation which you'll see a carbon copy of right after the break.

Eric Schmidt shows off a Nexus S at the Web 2.0 summit