Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. A 1.2GHz to 1.5GHz processor. 720p "monster-sized" display. 1GB of RAM. 1080p playback. A 5MP rear camera with souped up sensor. LTE data. Possibly with some sort of low power-consumption 28nm Snapdragon chip, or a TI OMAP 4460. In a thin, light body.
Sure sounds like a specs party, doesn't it? That's the rumored "Nexus 4G" -- not to be confused with the Nexus S 4G, which actually exists on Sprint -- as reportedly described by an unnamed source to BGR.
We've seen a lot of straw-grasping lately in regards to the next "Pure Google" phone. There's the now-debunked fake Nexus 3, and the rehashing of an old LG promo graphic that was so wrong we didn't even bother with it. And now we have the "Nexus 4G."
Google's certainly going to make another Nexus device, no doubt about it, if only to serve as a developer phone. And they've been making some damn good ones, starting with the Nexus One in January 2010, and following that in November with the Samsung Nexus S.
As for the rumored specs of the "Nexus 4G?" It doesn't take much imagination to dig up that a new phone will be faster than an old phone. That's pretty much a given, right? Either a TI OMAP or new Snapdragon processor, and not the NVIDIA quad-core Kal-El, which we've actually only seen in tablets so far anyway. As for the huge, high-def screen? Sure. Why not. Let's just hope whomever the manufacturer is (BGR's source says LG or HTC are in the running), let's just hope they can make enough of them.
But it's the possibility of it being an LTE device that gets a little more interesting. On the one hand, it makes no sense. The Nexus One was released as an unlocked GSM device. (OK, it first was released as a T-Mobile 3G-compatible phone; an AT&T 3G version came a couple months later.) Same goes for the Nexus S, which first saw life as a T-Mobile 3G-compatible device. The Nexus S 4G on Sprint came later. (You can import an AT&T 3G-compatible version, but one has not been officially released in the United States.) So a developer phone with LTE? Right now, only Verizon has an LTE network in the United States, and the rest of the world is just getting started with it. We know how much you Verizon fans would love a Nexus phone. (Remember how the Nexus One was supposed to come to Verizon?)Might one finally be on the way?
"But, Phil!" you say. "AT&T will have an LTE network! They say so in 2011!" Yes, they do. They say they'll have five cities (Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio) up this summer, with 10 or more markets by the end of the year. That'll cover 70 million people, AT&T says. Might we see AT&T and Google team up for the launch? That could get interesting.
Point is, this is all unconfirmed and unofficial -- and while we're practically drooling over some of the specs, we're still a ways away from seeing anything. The fact that the unnamed source gives a veritable multiple choice of specs should tell you something about how unofficial all this remains.
That mean we wouldn't wanna see any of this happen? Hell, no. We, and our credit cards, welcome it.
Source: BGR
