Well we didn’t get a full announcement of Android 2.3, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt just confirmed the Nexus S would run Gingerbread and should be available in the “next few weeks”. When he pulled out the “unannounced phone” to give a brief preview of Google Maps, you could clearly see that he was on T-Mobile, which is rumored to be a launch partner.

When questioned about his comment that Google would never product a Nexus Two, Eric Schmidt joked that was still correct since the new phone will be called Nexus S (and S was a dyslexic 2). He also hinted that mobile payments would play a large role in Gingerbread and that a phone like the Nexus S could replace credit cards.

Now we know for certain that the phone is real, but it remains a mystery what the hardware specs will be. Originally we reported it would be a single-core 1.2 GHz Hummingbird processor, but our sources say that version was scrapped in favor of a faster dual-core model.