A video showing Google’s Nexus S smartphone running Android Ice Cream Sandwich popped up earlier today. Want to know why it may or may not be fake? We’ve covered that after the jump!

The video was posted by Engadget – a blog dedicated to covering consumer electronics – after receiving an anonymous tip. The news comes over a month after photos of Android Ice Cream Sandwich running on Nexus S showed up; as they were photos, they weren’t quite descriptive as the video uploaded today.

We won’t get into the description of the video since you can watch it for yourself at the end of this post. Instead, we’ll talk about how this may or may not be fake, after the quote.

From Engadget:

The one Android update to rule them all — better known as Ice Cream Sandwich — is penciled in for an official launch sometime in the next two months, so it’s only natural for some shots to leak out. We just weren’t expecting a two-minute video showing off a few of the new features. As the story goes, a lucky gent ordered a Samsung Nexus S on eBay and, upon its arrival, noticed that his new prized possession looked a little… different. Hopping over to the About screen, he was shocked to discover that the device was running ICS. The firmware appears to be operating on the same baseband as the screenshots leaked a few weeks ago, but it’s running on an updated build (IRK48) and kernel (3.0.1).

There are quite a few reasons for this to be fake, as pointed out by anonhater on Reddit: the video shows Android using Arial font instead of Droid Sans, it looks like an improvement over the Ice Cream Sandwich 2.4 Launcher and the lockscreen is based on Ripple Lock [Market Link]. Other than this, the story of this device being ordered from eBay itself is quite… questionable.

Still, there are quite a few reasons for it to be not fake, as pointed out by MrSpontaneous. He cites the polished animations and transitions, the “fluidness” of the interface and how it all looks like the perfect mix of Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Not convinced yet? One last major news that adds to its authenticity is how Google apparently remote-wiped the device a few hours ago.

The next release of Android i.e. Ice Cream Sandwich is slated for a release sometime next month, according to two folks from the industry: Eric Schmidt and Rohan Shravan. Ice Cream Sandwich will be to Android smartphones/tablets what iOS 4.2 was for iPhone and iPad: a grand unification update – one OS to rule them all.

Google hasn’t really given details about what to exact new features to expect from Ice Cream Sandwich, but they have said that it is their “most ambitious release to date”.

We look forward to your comments regarding this video. Fake? Not fake? You be the judge!

You may also like to check out:

You can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the web.

Related Stories