The Taiwan’s iPhone attachment solution could find a market for telcos and service providers wanting to equip their customers with an NFC-enabled iPhone, since Apple has declined to build the technology directly into its smartphones. Taiwan’s mobile operator still needs approval from regulators to serve as a reputation of trust to handle management of the applications in the device. It might also need certification from MasterCard too. Overall, it is good to have a NFC-enabled iPhone 4 to compete with Google wallet, but the service is only supported in Taiwan at the moment.

• Big, fast and powerful: the Nexus Prime has a 4.65-inch display and LTE, runs one of the fastest 4G networks in the world and has a dual core 1.2ghz processor.
• Everything about this phone is smoother. There’s a new font optimized for HD, software buttons replace hardware buttons and the keyboard’s improved.
• Your face unlocks the phone, as facial recognition replaces a traditional pass code.
• The new and improved camera has zero shutter lag, autofocuses, takes low-light photos, stitches together images into seamless panoramas and shoots 1080p, time-lapsed video. You also have lots of instant editing options such as removing red eye, adding a “hipster” filter or cropping.
• The phone gives you a detailed analysis of your data usage, down to the very app sucking up all your bytes.
• Android Beam eases sharing between phones — simply bump your phone against another Android to transfer videos, maps or other content.
• Gmail and Google calendar have slick new looks and are integrated into the OS.
• The People app innovates your contacts list, linking individuals with all of their social profiles.
• You can multitask and view your recent apps.
• Developers can download the SDK starting immediately. The phone will ship to the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia in November.

This Galaxy Nexus has specs similar to yesterday's old news Droid RAZR with one big difference: the Nexus sports a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, about a third denser than its competitors and once again upping the smart phone screen size/resolution ante.

Otherwise, behold the Nexus specs highlights:

• 1.2 GHz dual core processor (same as Droid RAZR)
• 4G LTE connectivity (same as Droid RAZR) or 4G HSPA+, depending on carrier
• 5 MP digital camera (Droid RAZR: 8 MP camera)
• 1080p video recorder (same as Droid RAZR)
• 16 GB/32 GB memory (not sure if the second 16 GB is an included pre-installed 16 GB micro SD card or a second model with 32 GB of built-in memory)
• 8.94mm thin (Droid RAZR 7.1mm)
• 135 grams (Droid RAZR 127 grams)

But it's not these specs that arguably pushes the Nexus a smidge past the Droid RAZR. It's Android 4.0

What's in the Sandwich?

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, as implemented on the Nexus, includes four new features:

Software navigation buttons, a first for Android smartphones. According to the press release, "the lock screen, home screen, phone app, and everything in between has been rethought and redesigned…"

Android Beam, which uses Near Field Communications (NFC) technology that is supposed to turn your phone into a debit/credit card, allows you to share web pages, apps and YouTube videos with friends by simply tapping your phones together.

Face Unlock, which uses facial recognition to unlock your phone.

People app, which lets you browse friends, family, and coworkers, see their photos in high-resolution, and check their latest status updates from Google+ and other social networking sites.

Since I was not in Hong Kong, I'm not quite sure how any of these works or if they are an improvement over Android 2.3.5 (if you're keeping score at home, Android 3.0 is the tablet-based Honeycomb operating system). Nexus is due to arrive on these shores in November, so I guess I'll find out then.

But at the rate at which the Android army is announcing new 4G phones with 4.x-inch screens, Apple is going to have a lot of catching up to do if and when the iPhone 5 ever actually comes out, even with an ever sassier Siri.