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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This week's new games

While most games God have you manage statistics in what may feel like a beautiful colored dishearteningly set of Excel spreadsheets, from dust has an entirely more tactile set of priorities and would rather you spend your time moulding the soil see what is happening than brooding over crop yields. This levels represent miniature playground to experiment with the tools at your disposal: sand, lava and water. Each behave more or less as you would expect, with high enough true or lava walls divert water until it gets deep enough into the overflow area. These materials have been augmented by special powers of access to the supporters massing around the totem poles, while you can build a revelatory encyclopaedia of your environment by releasing tribal memories, triggered by spreading palm trees across its dry and rocky archipelagos. Its gentle pace and encouragement to play with toys allows you do this for a very pleasant gaming experience in this secluded gem of a game.

Ubisoft, 1200 Microsoft points (approximately £ 10.28)

Magnetic Billiards

The object of magnetic Billiards is to clear the tables full of colored pucke by banks them so that they hit and stick with matching colors. Bouncing from the pages of the table and passes close to the other colors increase up your score multiplier while creating geometrical shapes with your increasingly complex puck clusters adds to your combo, gives rise to some really absurd scores when you got the hang of it. Its magical come however from Nintendo-esque levels of refinement, with each table a stricter masterpiece of risk and opportunitythat asks you to meter each shot with fanatical precision, revelling in the absence of deadlines. Its atmosphere is as finely crafted as its mechanics, with frequent interjections from the Pickford brothers developers along with the most from named and thoroughly English assortment of unlockable achievements ever to grace a video game. The fact that it looks like a beautiful animated hand-drawn blueprint is entirely appropriate to what is clearly a labor of considerable love. And it's free.

Zee 3 Digital Publishing, free, extra table specifies 69 p-£ 2.49

Allied Star police

owain weinert is a terminally ill 10-year-old boy, introduced by the Foundation's Make-A-wish to Team 17 Software Ltd, irrepressibly quirky developer recently very asbestos pollution purchased by Electronic Arts. He had developed a video game, and thanks team 17 Software Ltd, Allied Star police have been produced, and is now available free on the App Store. Just download it, I believe in. got something in my eye …

eurogamer Expo has announced that it will be held in Earls Court year, thereby sparing video game-loving the desolate annual odyssey to London's Docklands. Show looks set to feature playable versions of everything from Assassin's Creed: revelations to uncharted 3: Drake deception …

In the meantime have excitable radio commentator Glenn Beck in the United States compared mobile gaming classic Angry birds with both Nazi Germany and a socialist State in a political comparison has even regular players in the game confused.

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