It’s the age old tale. Company makes phone. Company codenames phone (sometimes multiple times). Company dabbles back and forth between a couple names before ultimately choosing the wrong one (*cough* HTC ChaCha *cough*). Carrier changes the name of the phone anyway, usually back to the better name (but sometimes to a ridiculously long and uselessly vague name). Happily ever after.
Today the cycle repeats with none other than the holy grail of Android handsets, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus? Or is it Prime?
You remember back before the leaked press shots and the official announcement, all of the rumors centered around a different name: The Nexus Prime. And what a perfect name it was. But sometime between then and now Samsung won the right to insert their Galaxy moniker into the name, effectively squeezing out the “Prime” bit altogether.
Personally, I think keeping manufacturers’ individual brands out of a phone as sacred as a Nexus should be some sort ancient law, but seeing as the whole smartphone thing is relatively new I’ll settle for Best Buy and Verizon taking things into their own hands. Which is exactly what it looks like they’ve done. Right on the cover of this December catalogue for Best Buy is an ad for the Samsung Nexus Prime for Verizon (above), and if you flip a few pages you’ll see a second ad with a price tag of $299.99 on-contract (below).
What’s odd is that Verizon still has an email sign-up page up on their site for the Galaxy Nexus. It does, however, exclude the word Galaxy in the URL. Perhaps they’ve left that up so as to not spoil the fun Nexus Prime fun (this is, after all, a leaked catalog ad), even if it is simply the Galaxy Nexus dressed in Verizon colors.
Still no official word on availability, but it can’t be too far from now. Samsung absolutely wouldn’t miss out on the Holiday rush, especially with such fierce competition this season.
