Very few people remember this, but when Samsung announced the Galaxy S II back in February of last year the spec sheet said it was running a dual core 1 GHz processor. By the time the device actually hit the market in May however, that got bumped up to 1.2 GHz. Could something similar happen to the Galaxy Nexus? Right now the world’s first and only smartphone running Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Google’s operating system, ships with a Texas Instruments OMAP4460 clocked at 1.2 GHz. That particular system on chip (SoC) uses a PowerVR SGX 540 graphics processor. The folks at Droid-Life have discovered that a device that claims to be a Galaxy Nexus was just benchmarked using NenaMark’s software, which says that this mysterious Nexus in question is using a PowerVR SGX 544. How is that possible? Some Googling reveals that Texas Instruments has a higher end SoC called the OMAP4470 that makes use of the PowerVR SGX 544. Other key differences between the 4460 and 4470 is that the latter can be clocked at 1.8 GHz versus the fomer, which tops out at 1.5 GHz. Since the Galaxy Nexus runs 300 MHz slower than the maximum speed of the 4460, then can this new Galaxy Nexus be clocked at 1.5 GHz?

Anyway, what we want to talk about is the GPU: What’s so special about the PowerVR SGX 544 compared to the PowerVR SGX 540? It’s 250% faster according to AnandTech, who also says Texas Instruments estimates that devices using the OMAP 4470 will hit the market during the first half of this year. That’s perfect timing for an updated Nexus to come out. Think about it, every time Google hosts their annual Google I/O developer event they like to give away free hardware. Why not give everyone in attendance one of these alleged souped up Nexus units?

As for current Galaxy Nexus owners … you know how fast this market moves, so no crying!