I'm not sure about "must have" - while I have a personal list of necessary features (that leaves me happy on my Blackberry) I'm of the opinion that the only real "must have features" are the ones that the Nokia 3310 had a long time ago.

However there's a few potentially big features. LTE is one - it's not massively interesting right now but I think if/when network coverage improves it could be. NFC is another - right now it's software that needs to catch up, but after that more phones need to have NFC in them. And I'm sure there will be others that pop up in the near future.

But is it an excellent opportunity for people with older phones to buy a nice new one. Only downside is the gigantic screen.

Yeah, I'm in the market for a new Android phone right now and phones seem to be going through a late-50s auto industry "new larger size!" phase.

And the pitiful internal storage coupled with the lack of expandable storage. It's still much more convenient for me to sync music to a card than to wrangle with the various cloud services.

Wifi + sftp client have helped me manage my ebooks on my phone, copying them from my Linux box. You ought to be able to do something similar, just get on your home wifi network and pull over your music.

It's not something I particularly care about. I'm not even using all of the 8GB on my current phone.

Some (like me) consider that an upside.

The problem is that there is no alternative. All high-end phones are gigantic. Same for all Nexus phones.

The Droid RAZR i/M disagrees with you.

Locked bootloader, so it's not an option. Also, only Nexus series phones are really worth it these days.

The "Developer Edition" is unlocked, and I agree on the second point. Unfortunately, you're at the whim of Google and the consumer market, which apparently demands large phones.

I think if I was still using a Galaxy Nexus, I wouldn't feel a pressing need to upgrade but I'm not so sure about the Nexus S.

What version of Android do you have running on your device and if it is the latest (Jelly Bean), how is the performance ?

Currently running Android 4.2 - my UK network supplier is pretty good about piping updates to the phone.

The early 4.1 kept eating the battery but 4.2 is OK as long as I switch of wifi when out and about.

Are you sure you're not on 4.1.2? The Galaxy Nexus, never mind the Nexus S, doesn't have 4.2 yet.

Indeed, 4.2 hasn't yet been released.

And I don't think UK carriers have any meaningful control about when Android OTA updates are pushed out?

Which network is that? I'm stuck on 2.2 on my (cheap) year-old phone.

Vodafone

The Nexus S is quite sluggish with Jelly Bean.