Samsung Nexus Prime To Mark Ice Cream Sandwich DebutSamsung Nexus Prime To Mark Ice Cream Sandwich Debut

Samsung has something big planned for its "Unpacked" press conference, which is scheduled for Tuesday, October 11. The company published an interesting teaser video today that talks up the idea of things that "go together" with one another, such as cookies and milk, wine and candles, and coffee and a newspaper. What could it be?

Google's executives have hinted that the next version of Android--dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich--will arrive this fall. Ice Cream Sandwich is going to take the best elements of Gingerbread 2.3 and merge them with the best elements of Honeycomb 3.2 to make one, all-encompassing operating system that works on smartphones as well as it does on tablets.

Ice Cream Sandwich is important because developers will only have to write applications once to run on both Android smartphones and tablets. As it stands today, developers have to create their applications for either Gingerbread or Honeycomb, and then adapt to the other. Not so with Ice Cream Sandwich. This is a big deal and will make the lives of developers much simpler.

This new version of Android will need to make its debut on a new piece of hardware. In January 2010, Google debuted Android 2.1 on the Nexus One. In December 2010, Google debuted Android 2.3 on the Nexus S. This time around, it is possible that Google is going to debut Android Ice Cream Sandwich (the version number has not been defined) on the Samsung-made Nexus Prime.

Samsung has been leaking hints all over the place that it is the company chosen by Google to field the Nexus Prime. Today's video is only the latest such hint.

In the video, we see a curved piece of hardware that looks like it could be a tablet. There's something attached to the bottom of it, however, that looks suspiciously like a smartphone. Samsung could be suggesting that what's coming is a combination of two things--the smartphone and tablet operating system--which would be Ice Cream Sandwich.

I've seen some talk that interprets the video more literally, meaning that Samsung is announcing a pair of devices, a smartphone that attaches to or connects with a tablet. Is this possible? Sure. It's possible Samsung is announcing both a new smartphone and tablet, and Ice Cream Sandwich.

We'll find out one way or another next week. In the meantime, here's the video.

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