The winner of this week’s Android Central photo contest is August with his picture of a compact in a quiet street scene, taken with his Samsung Galaxy S II using Retro Camera .  This week’s pictures were as amazing as last time around, and picking just one was no easy feat.  It’s the kind of work we all enjoy though, so we love doing it.  Keep an eye on your e-mail August, I’ll be contacting you about getting your battery shipped out.

A Nexus phone on the Verizon network is a pretty big deal.  Plenty of people never thought it would happen (guilty), as Verizon has the muscle to have a bit more control over their network than most, and the Galaxy Nexus may take a bit of that away.  We’re all happy to be mistaken about it though, trust me.  You guys deserve this phone, and have been waiting for this phone since the day everyone realized that Verizon wouldn’t be carrying the Nexus One after all.

If you managed to survice through the weekend, congrats! You’re just in time to help us celebrate our 500,000th member! Lot’s happening in the forums right now, so if you need help, got something to share or just want to talk Android make sure you check them out!

Not to be forgotten, the venerable Nexus One got itself a little update overnight. Now at Android 2.3.6, Build GRK39F, the update … does something — the update screen just says “important bug fixes and security patches.” We’ll take their word for it.

     Droid Bionic                                Stock Android 2.3.4

In his pre-release hands-on and review of the Motorola Droid Bionic, Joe the Insider also gave us a peek at some web browser benchmarks.  These numbers aren’t the end-all be-all of real world performance, but they do show how the hardware and the software handle things like sprites and math functions while rendering what you see in the web browser window.  And the Bionic looks like it does a fine job handling it’s business.  Compared to a fully stock Android 2.3.4 build on the Nexus One (it’s not even rooted!), the Bionic beats the score hands down, even while running out of the box stock with all the Blur bells and whistles.

Take a look at the picture you see here.  Clear your head and take a long hard look at it (we’ll wait).  See it yet?  I’ll give a hint — it’s not a Samsung Galaxy S II with a big juicy Verizon logo up top, no matter how bad we all wanted it to be.  When we read the caption attached to this picture uploaded at Amazon, things start to make some sense:

So what does Google’s acquisition of Motorola for $12.5 billion mean for Android’s Nexus program? (For those new to the platform, that’s Google’s yearly “Pure Google” phone — basically a developer-level phone that’s also refined enough for consumer purchase.) Will the next Nexus be from Motorola? Will they all be from Motorola from here on out. (The first two were the Nexus One from HTC and Nexus S from Samsung.)

Believe it or not — there are still a few carriers out there who have yet to push out Android 2.3.4 for the Nexus One. Until today, Videotron in Canada was one of those carriers but they can now be removed off that list as they’ve now made Android 2.3.4 available for Nexus One owners. If you’ve not already gone ahead grabbed the update through other means, you can fire up system updates and get it now.

If you’re still rocking an unrooted, Vodafone-branded Nexus One, then you’ll be pleased to hear that today sees the release of the official, Voda-approved Gingerbread update for these phones. The carrier has announced that Android 2.3.4 has begun rolling out over-the-air to its Nexus Ones, bringing these handsets up to date with unbranded Nexii.

It’s been quite a while since Hulu initially announced they’d be bringing Hulu Plus to Android. That wait is now finally over — for some users that is. In order to make use of Hulu for Android you have to have one of the only six devices that are currently compatible. As noted on the Hulu blog: