sprint upgrade timing/ next nexus

My rooted HTC Hero's becoming old and I've been up for an upgrade with Sprint since August.

I would prefer something with ICS out of the box, at least 1.4gh and 1g of ram. Again, on Sprint.

I was starting to think the next nexus was going to get me close to those specs, plus the bonus of being a nexus...

But from what I'm seeing, the next round of galaxy phones don't have the specs nor the ICS, plus the nexus stories I seem to come across have me confused. It appears there's a nexus device and a droid prime device, both of which are being talked about as being verizon exclusives.

So my questions are - can someone clarify the current nexus situation? And if the next nexus isn't coming out on multiple carriers, namely sprint, what are my options considering specs. I'm not aware of any phone at this point on Sprint's launch list that has ICS, much less a 1.4.

I'd love to be wrong about all of this as it would mean I could utilize this upgrade. Thanks for any info.

 

Thanks. To clarify, I'd prefer the nexus for it's dev unit benefits, so if it also has most of the "likely" specs the linked article mentions, that will work for me. So if it's the case, that answers my question. Thanks!