September was quite a month for mobile lovers, but October isn't looking half bad either – or the second half of October, at least.
We've got the Apple iPad mini announcement on the 23rd, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 landing at the end of the month, and now Google has tabled a major Android-related launch event of its own on Monday, October 29.
And while the invitation for the New York press event goes for the now-standard practice of not actually revealing what the event is for (it just teases “the playground is open”), recent rumours point strongly at the unveiling of some new Nexus hardware.
There's been a steady chatter of Nexus-related rumours and leaks zinging around for a while now, much of it seemingly contradictory. LG has been most strongly linked to building the next Nexus - in fact, it's already been linked to an October 29 announcement, but HTC has been mentioned in other rumours.
The one possibility that would explain the apparent confusion is that Google is planning multiple Nexus smartphones made by different companies – a theory that first emerged a few months back.
According to that rumour, Google is planning on marking Android's fifth birthday by announcing five new Nexus smartphones, an idea we found hard to believe at the time but which now seems more credible by the day.
An even bigger question mark surrounds Android itself. Every Nexus device in the series so far has been released in conjunction with a new version of Android. This time, however, the Android ecosystem is still catching up on the previous two versions – Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean – and so we may just be looking at an incremental 4.2 version of Jelly Bean, allowing the Nexus hardware itself to take centre-stage this time around.
We'll hopefully have all the answers on the 29th – which by the way is the same day Microsoft is unveiling Windows Phone 8. It's looking like a busy day.
