Nexus S in Italy next month, no sAMOLED but has 720p video?

The second generation Android flagship, the Google Nexus S, has reached Italy. The news is both good and bad - the SuperAMOLED screen is missing but the camera has grown HD video recording capabilities. Now how about that for a surprise? Perhaps Samsung intended the HD video recording to fill in of the lesser screen and that's the reason why the Nexus S inexplicably doesn't offer it States-side.

Today Samsung announced that it will be launching the Nexus S in Italy soon. Most of the interesting specs are here - Android 2.3 Gingerbread, 1GHz CPU, NFC and so on. But the SuperAMOLED screen has been swapped out for a Super Clear LCD unit just as it was rumored in the first place (last paragraph here). We were not impressed by the Super Clear LCD on the Samsung Wave II - we'd pick a SuperAMOLED over it any day, but the Italians may not have a choice.

On the upside, the Italian Nexus S and its 5MP camera can record 720p video at 30 frames per second. The Galaxy S, the phone that the Google droid is based on, can record 720p too so it was only a matter of software support - which is missing in the original Nexus S.

Yesterday, Google put out an OTA update for the Nexus S, which fixed some bugs (among them the SMS bug), but we haven't heard reports yet that the update enables 720p video capture. This could be wrong info from the Italians or their Nexus S phones will come with a yet to be released firmware update.

Anyway, the Google Nexus S will be available in Italy starting February with a Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price of €550, which is about €50 more than the UK retail price of £430.

Source (In Italian)