After being in the U.S. for about four months, the Samsung Nexus S is finally coming to Canada by way of Mobilicity, Telus, and Rogers, according to a flurry of leaked internal memos. All three will be launching on April 7 (tomorrow) for $499.99 off-contract on Mobilicity and Rogers, while Telus will cost $549. Rogers will be offering a $99.99 on a three-year contract as a promotional rate, and Telus will be selling it for a much less attractive $179.99 on contract, which one can assume Bell will be matching. Wind Mobile is dropping some pretty heavy hints that they’ll be picking it up, and seeing as Quebec’s Videotron was the first to offer a subsidized Nexus One in Canada, they’re likely to follow up with Samsung’s sequel.
The Samsung Nexus S is a big-name Android handset, and currently sets the baseline standard for Google’s mobile operating system. It has a 4-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen, 1 GHz processor, a 5 megapixel camera with 480p video capture, Wi-Fi b/g/n with mobile hotspot and DLNA home media sharing, 16 GB of internal storage memory (sorry, no microSD memory card), and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The star of the show, however, is the near-field communications chip, which will enable payments by simply tapping your phone on the appropriate sensor at stores. Check out our review of the Samsung Nexus S for the deep dive.
It’s pretty impressive to see the handset will launch on pretty much every major carrier in Canada within such a tight timeframe. Although at this point there might be higher-end dual-core Android phones with HDMI-out, and DLNA home media sharing over Wi-Fi already in Canada (like the Motorola Atrix), the Nexus S is the way to go if you want a “pure Google experience”, with as little manufacturer bloatware as possible. We’ll keep y’all posted for when these go official on their respective carriers tomorrow.