HandsetsNews

Next Nexus to Be 4G LTE Handset with Android 4.0, 720p Display [RUMORS]

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Our friends over at BGR have quite a scoop on their hands, if news they have picked up from an inside source pans out. According to their report, the next device in Google’s Nexus lineup will be a phone set to beast mode. The handset, which may go by the name Nexus 4G, will feature a multi-core processor, but it supposedly won’t be the quad-core Tegra 3 chipset or even NVIDIA’s dual-core Tegra 2 platform. Instead the third Nexus device would employ an OMAP 4460 or low-power 28nm Krait-based Snapdragon dual-core chip clocked at 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz. The devices display is said to be “monster-sized” (4.5-inch?) and will be capable of outputting images in 720p HD.

Bundled within the handset will be a 4G LTE radio and 1GB of RAM. A 1MP front-facing camera will compliment a 5MP rear camera with an advanced sensor that will more than make up for the seemingly low (for a high-end smartphone) resolution. The whole thing will run on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), which eliminates the need for physical or capacitive buttons anywhere on the device.

While these specs sound quite amazing, we caution to take this all as rumor for now. The Nexus 4G name seems odd considering it could easily be confused with the already released Nexus S 4G, though BGR does say this name isn’t necessarily final. They also state the handset may simply be a flagship phone being designed closely with Google for the launch of Ice Cream Sandwich and not the next Nexus at all. It could even launch as a flagship 4G LTE device for AT&T’s network. It sounds like some elements — namely the processor — are still up in the air, but we’ll take any configuration of the above specs, Nexus name or not.

[via BGR]

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193 Comments

  1. I smell Verizon. 

    1. Here’s hoping….but I kinda doubt it.  CDMA doesn’t seem to get the Nexus love…at least not first.

      1. LTE is GSM technology

        1. But you still need CDMA for voice, unless they make it an ONLY VoLTE device…which wouldn’t really fly until coverage gets better.

          1. The Charge uses LTE for voice, and CDMA when your not in a 4G area..

          2. incorrect

          3. I meant to say the LG revolution uses LTE for voice..

          4. Then why does Sprint have a Nexus phone? You can throw the CDMA argument out the door. Don’t count out Verizon just yet.

        2. LTE for att is near the end of its testing phase. i highly doubt google would put their money on an unproven network

          1. LTE is already out on Verizon. Did you even read the article? It says “Next Nexus to be 4G LTE handset.” Verizon is the only carrier with operational LTE.. ATT doesn’t have a single operational LTE city.

          2. He’s referring to ATT being the unproven network.  I as well doubt the Nextus will be on ATT’s LTE network first.  

          3. Thats what I just said! I know verizon has LTE & its highly probable thats the phone will be verizon because ATT’s LTE network will still be in its infancy 

          4. Your name inspires me to do great things…lulz

          5. Actually, I wouldn’t call AT&T’s LTE network unproven.  They are in the final stages of MAJOR REAL WORLD TESTING, which means that by lauch (end of year) it will be proven.  Also, I don’t expect this device to be ready for launch until next year anyway, which by then LTE will be available on both major carriers (AT&T and Verizon).  Therefore, my long shot bet is this new Android 4.0 LTE device may be LTE/WiFi only which would make it compatible on both carriers.

      2. Huh?  Nexus S 4G is a CDMA phone.

        1. but it’s still just a modified Nexus S….it was released on TMob first

        2. Which came out many months after original GSM Nexus S

      3. Well the original Nexus were supposed to go to Sprint and Verizon but it was killed by the carriers. I believe it was because they had upcoming flagship phones like the Dinc and the Evo that were launching in the near future.

  2. Battery life will probably be terrible. I’ll stick with my Nexus S. Hopefully they don’t wait 2-3 months to release ICS to us like they did for GB to Nexus 1 users.

    1. Prob not.  Dual-core chips have better battery life–especially Qualcomm’s Snapdragon with asynchronous control over each core.  I’d expect Ice Cream to be more efficient with battery usage as Gingerbread was.  The screen resolution and 4G radio (can be turned off) are what scare me in terms of battery life.

    2. I doubt that. Google always has a way of making their Nexus battery life shine compared to the phones on the market at the same time.

      1. Um the Nexus S was not much better, if at all, in terms of battery life as compared to the competition at that time. I don’t know about the Nexus 1.

        1. My Nexus S gets over 20hrs on a normal day.

          1. Normal doesn’t mean anything to me. Your definition of normal is not the same as mine. There are way too many factors such as widgets, apps running in the background, time spent on wifi vs 3g, what type of activity on the phone etc.

          2. Normal is 3G, Seesmic, Facebook, texting, email, usual sync, Beautiful
            Widgets, agenda widget.

            Thats normal to me. Heavy usage is playing games. Which I rarely do off of a
            charger.

  3. The camera quality on the Nexus devices have always been lacking.  I mean c’mon, 5MP camera on their newest device?  LAME!  Get with the program already.  Also, their newest device should at least product 1080p as opposed to 720.  What good is immediate software updates when Nexus hardware sucks?

    1. First of all megapixels don’t matter. Unless you want to take a picture of a huge image. You can have a 1MP camera that shoots 1080P. Also they aren’t talking about the camera shooting in 720P they are talking about the screens resolution having a 720P display which is absolutely amazing most devices don’t even come close to this resolution.

      1. +1.  Right on.  This says it all:

        “with an advanced sensor that will more than make up for the seemingly low (for a high-end smartphone) resolution”

        1. I understand that, but why would you put a 5MP sensor in what is supposed to be Googles latest and greatest device?  It makes absolutely no sense!  Especially when most low to mid level phones now use 5MP as standard.  I guess I expect too much when it comes to an all Google experience.  Everyone raves about Nexus, but I personally don’t see the appeal.  There are much better models on the market, that can be rooted and give you a “vanilla android” experience.
          But that’s just my nickels worth.

          1. If you do a bit of reading about the physics of light and image sensors, you’ll learn that anything >5MP, is completely pointless in a phone camera, and will only give you image noise and bloated file sizes. Higher megapixel phone cameras ONLY exist for marketing purposes.

            Until they develop sensors that can properly capture light at the current 5MP, don’t ask for anything higher. 

      2. true. . . numbers for pixel in cameras are rather meaningless these days. a lot more goes into the camera taking a good quality picture than the number of pixels it will capture.

    2. I don’t think you quite understand what you’re talking about. 720p (1280×720) is referring to the actual screen resolution, not output over hdmi. Asking for an actual screen resolution of 1080p (1920×1080) on a device this small is a lot to ask for. Apple’s “retina” display is only 960×640.

      Also, camera resolution (ie MegaPixels) is not the end all of camera quality. The signal to noise ratio and quality of the lens is probably the most important factor in digital sensors these days. Unless you’re going to print your phone photos bigger than Super B size (13×19) a quality 5mp sensor is sufficient. BTW, I have an old 3MP Cannon D30 that will take some astonishingly good photos.

      1. Apparently people don’t read the comments before they add one. 3 or 4 people have basically paraphrased what I said.

        1. The same can go for you as well, if you didn’t notice i posted basically what you had said with less detail a few minutes before you posted this.

          But that’s probably because you were typing your response at around the same time i was. Lol.

    3. You obviously don’t understand the article.

      1.  Megapixels means very little when dealing with a digital camera.  It’s all about the sensor.  Some of the best Digital SLRs on the market have low MPs compared to the 14MP devices out there.  These Digital SLRs still take pictures 10x better than point and shoots.

      2.  1080P display?????  There isn’t even a 720P display yet lol.  They aren’t talking about ouputting video at 720P.  Of course this device will be able to output at 1080P, that’s a given based on the chipset.  They are talking a 720P display on the phone!

      3.  1 GB of RAM!

      This hardware will certainly not suck, lol

      and who is the dude complaining that he wants a Quad Core processor on a phone?  Give me a freaking break.  My PC at home is a gaming PC and plays everything perfect and it is only a Dual Core.  If you don’t understand technology, then don’t comment about it…..thanx.

      1. totally agreed, some people are just “more more more” and really for those folks just let me tell you…

        you’ll be able to play angry birds on this handset, don’t worry 

      2. Dude, if your home pc is a “gaming pc” and it’s only got a dual core processor in it….you’re not setting the world on fire let me tell you!!  I’m actually kind of embarrassed for you that you even admitted that, but hey, to each his own. 

      3. umm I want a quad core…

        Your PC may play games at acceptable levels for you with a dual, but  just because something is acceptable (to you) does not make it perfect.  I am not saying that it will make the biggest difference, as generally you gpu will have a larger impact, however your dual in a world of 4, 6, and soon to be filled 8 or more cores available for the general consumer and not just an enthusiast your machine will slow to a crawl compared to others…  That may be perfect to you, but to me I would end up in tears.  Quite a few games take advantage of those extra cores that mean so little.  (though the extra cores in these phones much like in our pc’s bring ever so much more than a better gaming experience)

        If you don’t understand technology, then don’t comment about it…..thanx.

        the following was deleted from post i replied to
        ^^PS. I also hate those bastards that brought more memory to ram, higher pixels and screen size to our tvs, blazing fast gpus, color tvs, basically anything that has to do with progress and am personally going back to a feature phone because its perfect…

  4. What? No side facing camera? 

    1. No SFC no deal.  LOL

      1. Lulz

    2. REALLY?! No SFC?! FUCK THIS AND GOOGLE! IM GETTING AN HP VEER!!!! 3.5 adaptor and proprietary charger FTW!!!

  5. This honestly doesn’t sound great, i most likely won’t get the next Nexus device unless it has the Tegra 3 chipset.

    The 720P display does sound pretty awesome though. It’s still pretty early in the game so anything can change.

    1. and you need a quad core processor on your phone for what?  I’m pretty sure a dual core processor around 2.0GHz per core will do anything and everything you could possibly want your phone to do.

      1. That’s what we said about single core 1GHz phones…

        1. with the relatively low resolution we have on those devices i see no need for a quad core.

      2. Games do i need to say more?

        1. Dude seriously, my laptop has a dual core processor and will eat up any phone’s processor out there. Don’t get caught up in meaningless numbers like cores and clock frequency. 

          1. You act like i am saying “OMG! quad core processor” i could care less if it was dual core or quad core. I was saying i want my next device to have the Tegra 3 (Kal-el) processor. And if you know anything about this specific chipset you know what it can handle. 

          2. The thing about having the latest and greatest processor in today’s mobile world is, it may last you all of 2 months before something bigger and more powerful will replace it.  Don’t get caught up in all the hype surrounding Kal-el, because it was the name of Supermans dad.  (Remember, Kryptonite killed supermans dad!!) 

          3. Indeed, too many reviewers think that clockspeeds matter, but they don’t…
            A singlecore 1 Ghz sandybridge would rape the shit put of any quadcore mobile cpu any day.

          4. Any phone out now… but not a Tegra 3.

        2. Really? Who play hardcore games on a phone with only touch screen. Angry Birds don’t need a quad core

          1. Angry Birds don’t need a quad core… for now O.o

          2. What are they gonna do?
            Put more shit in the background? :P

          3.  Lol at the Angry Birds reference. Look up the trailer for Shadowgun and tell me it doesn’t need a dual/quad core processor to play at 60 FPS. And yes i do play hardcore games on a touch screen. And it’s quite enjoyable.

          4. Name one hardcore game on your cell phone? If I want to game I would get the PS vita that is quad core system with button 

        3. starcraft2 plays fine in 1920 resolution on a dual core 2.8 ghz. granted i also have a 8800 but come on a dual core 2ghz is plenty for any 720p games.

          1.  People must not understand what i am saying, i don’t care how many cores it has. I am looking forward to the performance of the Tegra 3 (Kal-el) processor.

            You can tell me all day about the processor in your computer. But honestly i don’t care, i know what i am talking about when it comes down to processors and all i was saying is i am hoping for the Tegra 3.

          2. I don’t know if I do anymore..
            The CPU part is good, but the 12 core graphics chip is horrible.
            I hope Samsung make a new chip that would be the equal of what the Hummingbird was.

          3. people who say they don’t care about “processing power”, do know now what their talking about when they say “it’s not important”. 

          4. Now you gotta thing about architecture too, the core 2 duo rapes these things at the same clockspeed.
            Also the GPU is mainly what drives the games, which is where the 8800 comes in. 

          5. Actually the Tegra 3 is about 50% more powerful than a core 2 duo

    2. I agree. I don’t mind another chip set besides the Tegra 3, but anything less than a quad core will fail to strike much interest from me.

      For one, the Tegra 3 is capable of much more than 720p (1440p), and supports 300 dpi. It would also make for a much smoother OS & gaming experience for Android….

  6. what’s so bad about buttons? 
    how do i turn off the screen or change the volume? can/will the recovery or clockworkmod be updated to be able to be used by touch? 
    getting rid of all buttons is stupid, IMO. Microsoft did that with Kinect and it’s really more of a hindrance, sometimes you need physical interaction. one of the things i liked about my droid versus the iphone was i actually had multiple buttons to do different things instead of 1 giant whatever button. i still think there should be a phone button on my phone, but i learned to deal with it. no buttons is just ludicrous.  

    1. I agree but the good thing is that 4.0 just makes it unnecessary and not useless.  I doubt the manufacturers would actually put out a phone with no buttons on it.  They probably will however take off one or two.

      1. When I think of 4.0, I think of virtualizing all of the capacitive buttons onto a “tool bar” located at the the bottom of the screen.  This won’t decrease screen size at all either.  I may be wrong, but it seems people are starting to believe navigating Android will be entirely different.  I do not–something along the lines of 3.0 with it’s virtual navigation buttons.  Android knows better than providing just a one-button UI.  People in the iOS world claim it’s simpler and easier to use.  Maybe for the first ten minutes, but once you get Android down it’s much faster and more intuitive to navigate the OS when compared to iOS.

        1. Yeah I agree that it will be like the 3 buttons on Honeycomb if they are to kill off some buttons.

          iOS people’s claim that the one button is simpler is dead on truth.  I played with a XOOM for 5 minutes and then made up my mind that the iPad was a much simpler device for me, my girlfriend, and my (8 year old)son to just pick up and use.  As well as other little kids who may pick it up and play with it.

          If I was the only one using a tablet in my house then I most definitely would have grabbed the Tab 10.1 (which I probably still will this year).  

          There’s no way in hell I would use a boring ass iPhone which is the equivilant to the Touch Wiz app drawer.

          1. The only way a one button device is simpler is if you have experience using it.

            Coming from Win Mo to Android, Android was easier for me to pick up n go. The iPhone….I was stuck trying to figure what to do.

            Its like ppl claiming one desktop OS is easier to use than another. Trying anything thats alot more different  than you’re used to is gonna be a learning curve.  Thats why I tell folks that use Windows if they never used OS X to play around with Linux first. The transition from Windows will be easier

    2. Hold on a minute…

      The capacitive buttons are used to navigate the Android interface.  These buttons will be recreated in virtual form for Ice Cream Sandwich.  It won’t be the one button dummy set-up that iOS has going on.  Physical volume and power buttons should still be present as well.

    3. +10
      I dislike not having a button to answer.end calls and I’ve been some software testing today on an Ipad and it feels like I have to do the Konami code in swipes to get between the screens.  
      Just give me like two or three buttons, I’ll remap them myself as I already have been doing, lol.

  7. “While these specs sound quite amazing”

    I’m actually not impressed by any of that.  Accept for the advanced camera sensor…

    But it would still be an awesome phone.

    1. Actually, there is an error in this post. BGR is reporting that the SCREEN is 720p meaning 1280×720. THAT would be impressive. The Phandroid post says it outputs images at 720p, which doesn’t even make any sense. Maybe it could output video at 720p, though the article says it will output 1080p.

      1. “The devices display is said to be “monster-sized” (4.5-inch?) and will be capable of outputting images in 720p HD.”  

        It coulda been worded differently but I took it as the screen itself is 720p.  But yeah I guess I would be impressed to see 720p on a phone like the Infuse 4G.  I’ve never had any pixel complaints on my Vibrant so I would have to see it in person to say I’m impressed.

  8. If this doesn’t come to Verizon I will cry. We have never gotten any Nexus love :(

    1. We almost did…then our dreams we crushed.

      1. True, but I’m glad they picked Droid Incredible over Nexus 1. But this… we NEED this. ICS + NFC + Dual core + LTE is literally all I want in a phone right now

        1. Throw in WiFi Direct, MHL, and maybe even 3D and this phone will be undefeatable.

          1. 3D? Ewww

          2. 3d =not eww. Some ppl see it as a gimmick, but I’m sure they said the same thing about the first touchscreen phone. Well without gimmicks I guess then there will never be innovation. This is the closest technology we have to hologramic picture in the general public. Think of it as THE NEXT STEP. Because without it we will never get to experience what we see on star trek and shows like that. So please stop saying 3D is a gimmick. The only gimmick is capturing in 3d. That’s something else for sure.

          3. @ Elijah013…I applaud your comment good sir!

          4. A few more acronyms and we will have the whole alphabet.

    2. That’s a Verizon choice. :)  You chose Verizon and you must accept their consequences.  Come join us at the T-Mobile family.  :)  We get it all!  And you don’t pay for tethering/WiFi Hotspot, as long as you don’t opt for it when you sign up :).

      1. “Come join us at the T-Mobile family.  :)  We get it all!”

        Except for coverage.

        1. Greatest comment of the day.

        2. TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        3. Wifi Coverage. ‘Nuff Said

        4. Now THAT was freakin hilarious!!  BEST comment of the year, so far! 

        5. Ha so true

        6. I have no problem with coverage on T-mobile. I get BETTER coverage than Verizon and AT&T even.

      2. He meant to Say Sprint.

        1. You win. lol I wish I could switch to Sprint but alas, I can only be on Big Red or AT&T because of my father’s work.

      3. Post again, but with more smiley faces please.

    3. Well maybe if verizon wasn’t such a crappy expensive network…

      1. Crappy, no. Expensive, yes. Get your facts straight brochacho…

        1. You get what you pay for. Great network and reliability for a high cost.

          I’m an ex-VZW subscriber, fyi. Currently w/ Big Yellow.

    4. If this comes to AT&T, I”ll laugh at you.

      1. Aww cool man you’re on AT&T?!?! I’m mad jelly at you right now 

        /s

        1. I like your style men…lulz

    5. Also, if Verizon doesn’t want this phone they would be fools. Sure they may want all their phones locked and bloated but they could be the carrier that totes they have the first Android 4.0 phone.

  9. How is this any better than the Sensation or Galaxy S2? Besides the fact that it will have Ice Cream Sandwich and get updates immediately.

    1. I wa thinking the same thing. The Galaxy s2 might still be a better phone than this..

      1. This thing will be better than the Galaxy S II anyway.

        1. you sir are obviously smoking crack!

  10. To be honest aside from pure google experience the N1 and N2 have not been anything groudbreaking so it does not excite me at all to see a future nexus. It should have multiples firrst’s not not the Android 4.0. How abt 12 MP camera and 3 MP front facing, Quad core, 4.5 in display and available on all carriers, so no one feels left out. Just a thought…

    1. The Nexus line is never meant to be anything “groundbreaking.” It’s meant to be a baseline device for developers. That’s it. Us tech geeks just want it to be groundbreaking becaue we want a untainted Android phone with all the kicks. But they’re technically not making it for us…yet.

      1. Didn’t Andy say that the the next nexus was gonna gonna be ground breaking or something like that?

    2. You should read up on the nexus one.

    3. True..
      If the rumours are indeed correct. This is exactly the specs of Galaxy S II. With degraded camera. 2mp/8mp I know that megapixel doesn’t count for everything.

      Please put in the either Samsung’s Exynos/Orion cpu at least…

      1. Do you mean GS3?

    4. I think it’s typical that people tend to advocate for more processing power, even if they don’t have a clue what to do with it. If the 28nm krait-based Snapdragon (which will probably have a-synchronous cores like its scorpion-based predecessor) can save as much power to make your phone last for several days without a charge, would that not be considered as a first? Would that not be groundbreaking? And as for the increase in the megapixel count…

      Why anyone would care that much about the megapixel count is beyond me. Like more megapixels would automatically mean a higher image quality. It would be way better to improve the performance under different light conditions, add a decent flash (eventhough the LED is really useful as a flashlight), optimize the software, just to name a few…

      Personally, I would care more about optimization of the OS than a fancy quad core processor. You can have all the power in the world, but if you have other bottlenecks in your system all that power means absolutely nothing.

      And on a side note, the krait-based Snapdragons are capable of running at speeds of 2.5Ghz per core. You would think that is all the power you would need on a phone…

      http://www.anandtech.com/show/4170/qualcomms-announces-krait-cpu-the-successor-to-scorpion

    5. Note that the iPhone has a 5mp camera, which IMO blow everything else, even the stupid 8 and 12mp cameraphones out of the water.

      Check this out:http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

      Put simply, the bigger each ‘pixel’ on the sensor is, the more light it will collect, so it can be less sensitive (ie lower ISO). The lower the sensitivity, the better.
      Since phone cameras have a TINY sensors, they  will have to have much smaller individual sensors (corresponding to pixels) to have the same resolution.

      Note that Nikon’s flagship Dslr, the D3s, has a resolution of only 12mp. Its sensor is about 35x bigger than that of the largest cameraphones. 

  11. 4.5″ makes sense. You are removing capacitive buttons in favor of Honeycomb-style, software buttons, so in turn the 4.5″ qHD screen feels more like a 4.3″ WVGA with a dedicated software button area for the apps that use it.

  12. I hope it is for verizon, should put be just past my usual 6 month upgrade

  13. Kind of disappointing it’s not Tegra 3. 4G would’ve gone well with 4-cores. But at least I hope it’s the dual core Qualcomm Krait at 1.5 Ghz built on 28nm process and Adreno 300, rather than OMAP 4.Everything else about it is exactly what I’ve been hoping for: HD resolution, 4.5″ screen, no buttons, 4G, and last but not least, Android 4.0 ICS.Naming it 4G could be smart, too, because it would emphasize the fact iPhone 5 won’t be a 4G phone.

    1. I kind of think the iPhone 5 will specially since moving its announcement to September when AT&T will roll out its LTE network.

      1. I think the delay has nothing to do with AT&T’s LTE network. They could’ve just announced it with Verizon LTE at first if they wanted. Apple won’t put LTE into their phones, if LTE is not everywhere. Remember how iPhone 1 didn’t even have 3G?

        1. The delay was caused because the iPhone 5 was already designed with a “virtual SIM card” – to which the carriers said “no way”, so now they have to redesign it. Brilliant thinking on Apple’s part -“Let’s just design it however we choose without considering what the carriers want or don’t want.”

  14. This maybe will be my next phone or I will go with the rumored Motorola Targa just for the power. Also just wondering who’s the manufacturer for this phone.

  15. It’s about time for a 720p screen. But 4.5 is too big until youmanage to do it in a form factor NO larger than the 4.3 phones like the EVO or Droid X.

    1. They are removing capacitive buttons, too. That means extra longitudinal space for the screen, in essence having no major effect on the length or height of the device. Only the width will be slightly increased.

    2. Yes, I think that’s key here. A 4.5″ phone like the Infuse 4G is too large, but if they manage to make a phone with 4.5″ display as big as a normal 4.3″ phone, then I’m down for that. I think it’s possible if they cut enough from the bezel and discard the physical buttons.

  16. Amazing?
    Don’t you mean disappointing?
    I couldn’t care less about 4G, because it’s useless.
    And also, why not include a quad core processor?
    iPhone 4 has major problems doing anything because of it’s resolution, but this would take that to a whole new level.
    If it’s going to have a dual core processor, then drop the resolution.

    1. Problems such as?

    2. 4 g is useless? Maybe if you live in the backwoods, or some thing, us suburbanites love it!
      Quad core processor why, so it can run crysis, I don’t think so, I’ll stick with battery life.

      1. You obviously have no clue how dual/quad core processing works.  It actually improves battery life. 
        I could care less about battery life anyways, as long as it gets me through the day, it’s going on the charger when I get home anyways. And with a charger at work, one in the car, I have yet to run outta juice.

    3. lol @ 4G being useless.  You’ve obviously never tried an LTE phone on Verizon yet.  Whenever I happen to go back in a 3G only area it doesn’t even compare.

    4. Just like how 3g is useless to EDGE?

  17. If it doesn’t have a 5 row keyboard, it’s probably shit.

    1. Who the hell needs a keyboard to bulk their phone up? They need to go away.

      1. You need to go away.

      2. I agree.  People who dislike touch screen keyboards are scared of change, or they have fat monkey fingers.

        1. Show me how to switch between apps within a second on a keyboardless phone. You simply can’t.

          How about selecting a part of a text and copying it? Long press text -> select word -> move selectors until you select all you wanted (and keep strugging to keep the selector sit in its place when lifting your finger) -> press text -> Copy text. This is stupid. On a keyboard, Hold shift -> select using arrowkeys/dpad -> press Menu and C. Done.

          You really never used a phone with a proper keyboard, have you?

          1. Gonna have to side with the touch screen users here.  I started of with a Touch Pro and moved to a Hero.  Never looked back.  I love my N1’s screen.  The process you explained to copy text seems awful.  Gingerbread’s implementation of copy & paste is superb on touch screens.  Moving the cursors with your fingers is much smoother than using dpad IMO. Phone thickness means the world to me.  I would love a Xperia Play, but it’s just too bulky.

          2. I was talking about GB’s copy paste method. It’s absolutely terrible, and the cursors act as if they’ve sworn to jump around the moment i lift my fingers. I used a touchscreen-only phone (HTC Desire with CM7) as a secondary phone temporarily. The experience is absolutely terrible. 

            Regarding thickness, the Motorola Milestone is 15 mm thick. I don’t see how that’s “thick”.    The Xperia Play is thick for a reason: Ergonomics. It fits naturally in someone’s hands as compared to thinner phones.

        2. haha!!  I have fat monkey fingers…but I had my thumbs and pinky fingers surgically swapped and now I’m a touchscreen typing fool!  (my hands look a little odd, but who cares!)  :)

        3. It has nothing to do with fear of change, it’s personal preference. Having owned phones both with and without physical qwerty keyboards, I, personally, prefer a physical qwerty for several reasons (and no, I don’t have fat fingers by any stretch of the imagination – besides, most virtual keyboards have much larger keys in landscape mode than any physical qwerty on a phone), and depending on how it’s designed, they don’t necessarily need to be overly bulky. An OG Droid, or Droid 2 are barely thicker than a Thunderbolt.

  18. why the heck are there so many haters out there! This seems like an AMAZING piece of hardware! WTF people! there will be no buttons as far as the four on the front (home back search and menu) there will still be a volume rocker and power button so chill people! I would take any piece of crap that was running ICS… I am fairly certain ICS will blow my mind

  19. Id bet vzw gets this one

  20. For those Nexus haters, don’t forget, the original Nexus One, was released in Jan 2010. For those who don’t remember, the latest and greatest phone to date was the OG Droid. And the N1 specs blew it out of the water. It didn’t sell well, but honestly, how could it, Google didn’t market it, and why the hell would they? Moto and VZW had just dumped a ton of money on marketing (remember the “Iphone doesn’t” ads?), because Google promised they were only making the software. Prior to this partnership, there was the Hero, the G1 and the mytouch. Whoop de doo, phones on the smallest carriers. I didn’t get a Nexus S because apart from the NFC chip, there was nothing out of the ordinary of other phones being released at the time (except for the exclusiveness of GB for the first quarter, thanks for screwing N1 owners Google) If this is the new Nexus, I’m glad they’re back to blowing the competition out of the water, and marrying the software and hardware together into a stellar package, without any bloat, and (hopefully) quick software upgrades, like a little company called Apple does.

    1. If you think the og droid is the best android phone based on sales, you need to move over to apple. F u and f Motorola, they should just stay away from android altogether.

      1. Geez that OG Droid sure didn’t last long at my workplace (hospital). Sure everyone on Verizon got it when it came out but been replaced by iPhones and newer Droids. Sold alot but didn’t have a long life.

  21. Yeah, I’m still waiting for a vanilla Android experience on Verizon. I love my Droid X, but Blur is trash. Also, I’d love for Verizon to release a phone bloatware free.

    1. Dude, every carrier has some bloatware.  (some more than others, but still)  If you hate blur and bloatware, why haven’t you rooted already?  It takes all of 10 minutes to do and your dreams of a “vanilla android experience” are now a reality.  (Why are so many people afraid to root their phones?)

    2. Verizon had a vanilla Android phone. The OG Droid. I agree that Blur sucks. After going from a D1 to a D2, the only improvement was the keyboard and internal memory, the D1 even overclocked higher (with stability) than the D2.

    3. What’s Blur? That died didn’t it?

  22. Ahhh….I’m sure Sprint will have a version with WiMax slapped in as well since Google & Sprint are like Beans & Rice. My precious Nexus 3 will be here for the holidays!

    Funny how VZW subscribers dreams are constantly crushed year after year. Don’t even hear them bragging about the Thunderbolt anymore.

    1. Sprint will release it the same time that the EVO Quad Core 2 comes out and makes it look dated. Why didn’t the heck couldn’t the Sprint Nexus S be released alot sooner than freaking June.

  23. What the hell am I going to do with my tablet if I buy a 4.5 inch phone?  Way to big.  I prefer 4 inches but 4.3 is ok.

    1. I think 4 is just about perfect too. I am waiting for the next nexus, but if it is going to be 4.5′ I might have to look for something else… :(

    2. Ah, I’m pretty sure you can take more than 4.3 in, you just got to loosen up.

      1. Well, I probably could if the whole front of the phone is just the screen :), but I doubt that. I find infuse to be too big for a phone. 

      2. lol

  24. I’m just waiting for the day when AT&T announces this, then I can laugh at Verizon

    1. Meanwhile they laugh at you?

    2. yeah cause we all know how amazing att lte is!

  25. Am I the only one hoping it will not be 4.5′ screen?? Well,  unless there’s no bezel around it. It’s just too big for probably for a lot of people including myself. 

    1. Nope, I’m here hoping the same dang thing.

    2. I’m with you, 4 is the sweet spot and no bigger,who wants to carry a tablet in there pocket, I don’t and I wont ever. I guess I’ll be keeping my g2x for longer than usually

      1. That’s the beauty of the Galaxy S 2 with it’s 4.3″ screen.  It’s not any bigger than the original Galaxy S because they’ve utilized the whole screen. So to me, 4 to 4.3 is the perfect size, anything bigger is tablet territory and not comfortable to hold in hand, or carry in pocket.

        1. But if you go up to 4.5″ with no buttons on the bottom then you still won’t have to make the phone much bigger or any bigger at all correct? Just imagine something like the EVO 4G but thinner and using up all that width and length as screen real estate. Sounds good to me

          1. Correct.  All this talk of 4 is the sweet spot, 4.3 is OK, but 4.5 no way is not very thoughtful. How the phone feels in your hand or your pocket depends on bezel (side, top, bottom), aspect ratio, and the shape and thickness of the bottom of the phone.  Now assuming this phone really is 720p, that means it will by 16×9 (and not 5×3 which is the other common aspect ratio).  If they put some effort into it, they can do 4-5 mm side bezels and 10-11 mm top and bottom (or trade between top and bottom).  If they go with the Hitatchi screen announced in Feb, this is 4.5″ (incidentally, this gets you the same DPI is the iPhone 4 which in my opinion is not excessive at 326, though much more than  that would be wasted on me anyway).  Put those together and you get to a phone that is 122×66 mm.  Guess what – that is the size of the Evo 4G, which really isn’t that big (it’s no Infuse 4G, let alone a Dell Streak). 

            So everybody complaining about the possibility of 4.5, stop and think for a second will you?

          2. I put an Infuse next to my evo and they are almost the exact size, except its thinner and lighter (infuse)

    3. If the bezel is tiny and there’s no space wasted with physical buttons, then it might be fine. Otherwise, 4.3″ is the max they should go. It all depends how small they made the space around the screen, edge to edge and top to bottom.

      1. They might be able to reduce the bezel at the bottom, but the phone would still have to get wider to fit the screen that size since there’s not much bezel on the sides already. I saw a mock-up image of iphone 5 or whatever it might be with no bezel on the sides and it didn’t look good at all. :)

        1. I know, but that was a mock-up. I doubt Apple would make it that ugly if they make it edge to edge. Also, it still had the physical button and a high top, too, and it looked weird with thin sides but thick top and bottom.

          If they could make it with very thin sides and almost as thin top and bottom, it would look much better. Imagine just having a thin “glass slate” in your hand. We won’t have that this year, but perhaps in a few years.

    4. I agree. 4.3 already seems too big to me. I want to be able to slip my phone into the pocket of whatever pants I’m wearing, without any awkward bulges resulting.

      Seriously.

      1. That’s why they make less feature rich smartphones with smaller screens.  These larger screens are meant to take advantage of the greater video capabilities of these more powerful phones.

    5. Not since I saw the Infuse, 4.5 is great! 4 is tiny in my opinion

  26. This phone is the ONLY one giving me pause regarding grabbing the EVO 3D…I am wavering back and forth. Wait/Dont Wait

  27. No buttons at all? No thanks. If that doesn’t happen, then I guess this will not be the phone I leave my nexus one for.
    It’s not a tablet, it’s a phone. Second, if we had that big of a screen with all that power, good bye battery life it was nice seeing you. What a shame, I was looking forward to a phone like my nexus. I want my trackball back :<

    1. “trackballs” were so 2006!  Get with the times Mudrock!  :)

    2. Why can you be happy with the “two trackballs” between your legs. With a screen that big you won’t even need a track ball. Though trackballs were good for phones that didn’t have a touch display……

      1. Hey I liked my trackball! I still can’t select text accurately on bigger android phones but with my trackball pfft it’s simple.
        Either way though, if this screen doesn’t get shrunk down to like 4.1, and the buttons get taken away (Like the home button) It’s a no buy for me. I’m afraid with on screen buttons my hand will always accidently brush up against them which would suck

    3. Please do some research on these processors and how they can actually improve energy consumption before posted such ignorant statements about battery life…

  28. Please Please Google INSIST on have a LD notification light on the phone.

    1. Ever heard of NoLED?  Free on the Market and is completely customizable.  How long have you had your smartphone?

      1. Ever heard of Battery Consunption? C’mon, do you really think that a notification system that is powering on your screen is using the same amount of battery of a single oled? How long have you had your smartphone?

  29. The specs sound a little off. First the TI OMAP processors are the best hands down. Second the camera will be 8mp w/flash with 1080p video output. Its the Nexus3 c’mon  people .

  30. Pleaseplease go back to 3.7, put a 1800mh battery and create  a phone that lasts 3 days, please! If i want to watch movies i buy a tablet, c’mon a phone CORE BUSINESS is MAKEING PHONE CALLS! PLEASE!

    1. Leave. Now.

    2. Yeah those phones are called Feature phones that you get free with a contract. WTF are you doing with a Android OS phone if you just want phone calls. THAT THE FREAKING POINT OF SMARTPHONES = doing more that just phone calls!!

  31. am i the only one who is iffy about a 5mp camera? my Eris has a 5mp camera….. there’s got to be something better that they can do. then again they have a few months and these seem to be just leaked specs. *crosses fingers*

    1. Unless I’m mistaken, 5 megapixels = 2584×1936. For most uses, that’s really more than enough. Also, Megapixels != Photo quality.

    2. If you do a bit of reading about the physics of light and image sensors, you’ll learn that anything >5MP, is completely pointless in a phone camera, and will only give you image noise and bloated file sizes. Higher megapixel phone cameras ONLY exist for marketing purposes.
      Until they develop sensors that can properly capture light at the current 5MP, don’t ask for anything higher.

    3. People are often thrown off by the “more is better” attitude regarding megapixels (and number of cores to a processor, but that’s another matter). There is a LOT more to the equation than how many megapixels the picture is composed of, such as optics, aperature, light sensors, etc. There are a lot of digital cameras with 2 or 3 megapixels that have picture quality magnitudes better than an 8MP camera on pretty much any smartphone. I’m not insulting you or attacking you, I just thought that I would point out that you shouldn’t let 5MP vs. 8MP be a make-or-break decision for you.

      1. You and I (and other people know this) but the average consumer really does think bigger is better. I wish I could have a fantastic sensor at 3 MP on an Android phone vs. the OMGZZZ 8 MP madness!!!

  32. I was going to suggest that the screen might be the Hitachi 4.5″ 720p IPS screen: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/hitachis-4-5-inch-ips-display-has-1280-x-720-res-1-100-1-contr/

    But it won’t be in production until October, so that’s ruled out. Unless another company developed a 4.5″ 720p screen 18 months ago, I don’t know where the screen came would have come from. 

  33. Honestly, I wouldn’t even consider a 4.5″ Nexus, even if it did come to Verizon.

  34. I think someone should remind Google that big red saved android and because of them and the original Droid they have become a powerhouse and they can’t be bothered to show some love to Verizon and their customers with a nexus. Wtf Google if you want to be the best you gotta go with the best… LTE isn’t even on at&t heck they won’t even have as many supported cities so I guess if your plan is just to sell 10 of them you’re doing a fine job

    1. I agree wholeheartedly that Verizon, the OG Droid, and a massive marketing campaign was what put Android solidly on the map, and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. However, it isn’t Google’s fault that VZW doesn’t have a Nexus – they were going to carry the Nexus One, but went with the Incredible instead.

  35. Would be nice if the next Nexus had these specs but also radios for all carriers…to signify the unification of Android across devices and carrier with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich…one can dream.

  36. Oh please do not call it the Nexus 4G! As an accessory retailer I can tell you customers will find that very confusing. I cant tell you how many customers ive had order droid inc 2 cases for their droid inc. Or i9020 cases for their i9023. Phones need more unique names!

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