Samsung Nexus Prime to get UK launch 'within weeks'

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The Samsung Nexus Prime smartphone will launch in the UK this week. Photograph: Lee Jin-Man/AP

Samsung and Google are to launch the Nexus Prime phone to showcase the latest version of the Android mobile operating system, "Ice Cream Sandwich", in Hong Kong late on Tuesday night.

The phone is expected to be released in the UK within the next four weeks, in time for Christmas.

The launch had been scheduled for Monday last week, but Google and Samsung postponed it following the death of Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and former chief executive.

As a flagship device, the phone will run the standard version of the new Android update, rather than having Samsung's G-Wiz Touch-Wiz system running on top of it. Engadget suggests that it will have a high-definition display, dual-core 1.5GHz processor and a screen size of up to 4.6in.

Like the Nexus S, the Samsung device which showcased Android 2.3 "Gingerbread", the previous major phone version, there won't be physical buttons for key on-screen functions.

Samsung and Apple are neck and neck, having both supplanted Finland's Nokia to ship more than 20m smartphone handsets per quarter in the three months to June. Analysts are still waiting for third-quarter figures from Samsung; Apple will announce figures at its quarterly results on Tuesday night.

Samsung is expected to have supplanted Nokia as the largest mobile company in terms of handset shipments when it finalises its third-quarter results through its sales of "feature phones" which don't have third-party app capabilities.

The Google chief executive, Larry Page, said at the company's earnings call last week that 190m Android devices have been activated since its inception. He also said that the mobile business was on an equivalent run rate to being a $2.5bn business.

However, he did not specify how much of that comes through mobile advertising and app sales on Android; testimony given by a Google executive to the US Congress that two-thirds of mobile search comes from devices running Apple's iOS software.

Ice Cream Sandwich, which is version 4.0 of Android, is intended to be a cross-platform offering that unites the 2.0 branch, devised for mobile phones, and the 3.0 branch for tablets which was first released earlier this year on Motorola's showcase Xoom tablet. That should mean that app developers can target all sizes of screen in a single package.

Samsung's UK press office did not have any information about the timing of the launch or any other details at the time of publication.

Update: Android Central says it has the specifications. Notable points include 1GB of RAM, Bluetooth 3.0, and the following:

• Display: AMOLED HD: 4.65 inches Resolution 720 x1280) Maximum number of simultaneous colors
• Main Display: 16,777,216 color touch screen: capacitive (multi-touch),
• Main camera: 5 megapixel CMOS camera with LED flash
• Video recording 1080pHD (1920 * 1080)
• Front camera: 1.3 million pixels CMOS
• GPS
• NFC
• Micro USB 2.0

For the full list, see the site.

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Iran accuses Siemens to help launch Stuxnet cyber-attacks

Bushehr nuclear power plant, which was directed by Stuxnet. Iran claims Siemens helped the United States and Israel to implement it. Photo: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

Iran has accused the German engineering company Siemens to Israel and help the United States launching a computer worm, designed to sabotage its nuclear installations.

A senior Iranian military commander said that the company facilitated the Stuxnet worm cyber-attack against Iran by providing Washington and Jerusalem with information about a Siemens-designed control system, SCADA, used in Iran's nuclear sites.

"Our Executive officials should legal follow up on cases of Siemens SCADA software, which prepares the worm Stuxnet Earth," was Iran's Gholamreza Jalali, civil defence Chief cited by IRNA State News Agency as saying.

"Siemens should explain why and how it provided information on the codes SCADA software enemies and prepared a cyber attack on us soil," he added.

Iran played down the impact of the originally malware after its first appeared in July 2010, but in November of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad admitted that the nuclear program had been affected. However, he said that the questions which had been resolved without any serious damage.

According to Jalali, an internal investigation revealed that the worm had been disseminated from sources in the United States and Israel.

"It was a hostile action, which could have caused serious damage to the country, if it had not dealt with in a timely manner," he said. Last year, assigned to Iran, a group of experts to combat the worm computer.

Both the United States and Israel, which are reported to carry out covert operations against Iran's nuclear program, has denied computer experts claim that they were behind the development of the worm Stuxnet.

New York Times reported in January that the intelligence services in both countries cooperated in a joint project to develop a malware that targeted the industrial management software that Iran uses to run its centrifuges.

In March, Ralph Langner, told a leading expert in security, a Conference in California, in his opinion the isrælske intelligence service Mossad, was involved, but that "there is only one leading source, and it is the United States."

Siemens did not respond to the Guardian request Sunday to a conversation over Iran's allegations of its involvement in the development of malware.

Last year, with the exception of worm Stuxnet Iran's nuclear programme suffered from the murder of three of its scientists in action, some analysts claimed can be a part of the conversion results in the war against Iran.

Siemens was also caught in another row involving Iran when imprisoned Iranian activist filed a suit against the company and its joint venture with Nokia, NSN, August 2010 over allegations that they have given Iran's State-run telecommunications company with a monitoring systemIt has used to spy on its opposition.

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