Google’s Eric Schmidt shows off Samsung Nexus Android device

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been snapped using what looks to be the follow-up to the Nexus One.

As reported last month, the manufacturing rights for the official Google Experience Android device will be switching from HTC (who produced both the G1 and the Nexus One) to Samsung. The expected announcement to back this up hasn’t been forthcoming, but the device has been seen and even snapped in the wild.

Now it appears that the Google chief has given his own seal of approval, having turned up at the Web 2.0 summit sporting a slinky little black number.

Schmidt showed the device running on T-Mobile, and revealed that it sported Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which will be used in future Android OS releases to make payments from your phone instead of having to carry around all those pesky credit cards.

Despite the phone pretty clearly being the so-called Nexus S (according to Schmidt there’ll “never be a Nexus 2”), he referred to the device in his hand as an "unannounced phone" from an "unannounced manufacturer," and the manufacturer label was all taped up.

Still, the fact that he also revealed that the next iteration of Android OS (Gingerbread) would be out in the "next few weeks" suggests that the Nexus S (which should be the first device to run it) will be too.