Opinion: Why I Think You Should Wait For the Nexus Prime Before Buying a New Phone

While the Android Community has been on fire with a ton of crazy nice new devices as of late, my personal advice for anyone looking to buy a new smartphone would be to hold of just a bit until the Nexus Prime comes out. Sure, the Samsung Galaxy S II, the Motorola DROID Bionic, and the HTC Amaze 4G have created a buzz — and rightfully so. The three devices I just mentioned have just about become a household names over the past few months, and they come toting some amazing features, so don’t in any way take this as an attempt by me to discredit any of those devices.

One of the biggest (and most obvious) why you should wait — Ice Cream Sandwich — the latest installment of the Android OS. Not long ago we heard straight from the horse’s (or in this case, Eric Schmidt’s) mouth that ICS is right around the corner. I can’t see any justification for purchasing a new phone anytime between now and then, if then is in fact late October or early November. Granted, Samsung is usually a bit quicker to get their devices up to date than some other manufacturers, but do you really want to buy a new phone now and possibly wait months for Ice Cream Sandwich to get ported to your device?

Just as an example, I bought my current phone, the HTC myTouch 4G in December of last year. Needless to say, I had my it rooted and CyanogenModified within an hour of it coming out of the box. Luckily, I’ve been able to enjoy Gingerbread for almost 10 months now; those who either did not know how to, or just did not want to root their phones received their official update a little more than a month ago, and it wasn’t even an OTA — you had to head down to your local retailer and have the update pushed from an SD card by a Magenta Sales Rep. For some, this isn’t much of a concern, but there are others like myself who get enraged by being told we have to wait for the newest software for our phones that we JUST bought — hence the fact there is even such a thing as rooting.

This brings me back to my original point. Do you really want to run out and get a new phone now, only to have all of your friends flaunting Ice Cream Sandwich in your face a mere 30-60 days from now? Do you want to wait for your device’s manufacturer to push an official update out? You can always hope that there will be some love from the devs, which will more than likely will be the case, but there’s no telling how long it will take. It could be a bit before we start seeing ports of the new OS.

Don’t hold me to that last statement though, I would never underestimate the Android community; today devs are getting their paws on devices before they’re even street-legal, so it would not surprise me in the least to see some pretty speedy progress. Again, do you really want to wait?

Be it a week, be it a month, be it six months… I want Ice Cream Sandwich the second it’s available, and the Prime is gonna be the first device to come packing it. It’s already been announced that the device will be available on all the major carriers, so keep your eyes peeled for details on your carrier’s variant.

We’ll be bringing you details about every one of them, as they start to hit the air. Stay tuned!