An astute reader in the comments on a previous post noticed, [...]]]> Ok, ok, so I can’t say that as fact, only the person that shot/saved these photos knows for sure, but let me say this: the Google logo on the back of that Nexus S shot posted on Engadget sure does look sketchy.

An astute reader in the comments on a previous post noticed, “The Google Logo looks like it was photoshopped. Is it really written on the phone? Zoom into the photo. It looks strange.”

So I looked. And he’s right. Something fishy is going on. See for yourself below:

Click to see the full size image

I’m not trying to call out Engadget or start any drama, for all we know these pictures were edited when they were submitted. I’m just saying it realllly looks like that logo was added in Photoshop and I want to know why. We know the phone is real and we know it’s a Google Experience device, so why the photo manipulation?

When you zoom in on the logo, you can see a definite noise pattern around the type that is inconsistent with anything in the image surrounding it. I guess the noise could be due to horrible JPG artifacting, but the way it hugs the type isn’t something I’m used to seeing. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. At first glance it looked like a ‘shop, at further glance it really looked like a ‘shop, and when I hollered to Angie across the office, she even thought it looked like a ‘shop from a distance.

One of our favorite things about running a site this size is the epically-knowledgeable user-base. You guys are sharp and like to do some digging. Am I wrong here? Are the things I’ve noticed just the insane ramblings of a conspiracy fanboy? Or are these pictures edited?

UPDATE A lot of you guys are calling compression, I guess I could be wrong. But Chavez pointed out something interesting in the comments, “I think the first clue was that the logo didn’t say “With Google”.

I was about to hop on that train until I spun my Nexus over and noticed it just said Google, not With Google.

BUT THEN I noticed that the Google logo on my phone has a trademark. And so does the one on the Tab. And the phone in this shot doesn’t. I know we might not be looking at a final production model but accidentally leaving off the TM of a logo would be a mighty odd slip-up (and something that would be more likely to happen when pasting logos in Photoshop, not calling proper logo files for production).

Final statement: If someone can show me ANY other phone with a Google logo not accompanied by either “with” or a “TM”, I’d like to see it.