Several months ago, rumors starter swirling that Google and LG might be getting ready to unleash a new Nexus 4 in white color. To everyone’s surprise (or perhaps not), an entire photo gallery of pictures depicting a new white version of the device has surfaced, suggesting that a release might be closer than most of us might have expected.
Ingenious modders have turned LG's Optimus G into a fully fledged Nexus 7, complete with a broken LTE chip, and have released the mod into the wild.
There’s one very big difference between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android: how the updates and fixes work. Of course, there are much more differences than merely that, but this one has its own significance. So, if Apple messes something up in one iOS update, users will have to wait for the company to release another before that issue can be fixed. Be it battery woes to some driver having one line of code messed up, you have to rely on, and wait for, Apple to fix it (unless you’re jailbroken, that is). With Android, however, that’s now how things work. If something’s wrong with even a newly released device, chances are high that someone from the massive developer community will come up with a generally-implementable fix.
One of the biggest freedoms of wielding an Android device is the choice of ROMs that you get. Unlike almost all other smartphone and tablet platforms, having an Android means you do not have to always stick to whatever the manufacturer has packaged with your device in its factory state, and much like a computer, you can choose to have your own OS, some with their own specialties and enhancements, while others built from ground up based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Power users always prefer AOSP ROMs over stock or stock-based offerings, because of the broader freedom of customization and tailoring that they entail. Among those, CyanogenMod needs least of an introduction – the first ever AOSP ROM to hit the Android world has now taken another hatchling under its wings – the mighty droid, Google Nexus 4.
It hasn’t been very long since the world saw Android 4.2 Jelly Bean come to light, with all its fancy new feature enhancements, some of which have been welcomed across the globe with great enthusiasm. Whether you’ve tried the latest Android flavor on your device yet or not depends solely on what smartphone or tablet you are carrying, or if you’re using a custom ROM or prefer stock ones, but Google is on a roll already, having let out Android 4.2.1 just a while back, carrying, among various others, a bug fix that’s more obvious than all the others – the missing “December” in the original 4.2 release, which rendered people with birthdays and anniversaries in the last month of the year, well, without a reminder of sorts.
When the Nexus 4 was announced as next Android flagship, there was no mention of any 4G/LTE support. Then, when the phone came out mid-November, there was, again, no LTE support again – not very surprisingly, though, since supporting 4G would have essentially meant manufacturing multiple versions of the device to make it agreeable for all the different 4G bands around the globe – an approach that Apple had to adopt with the iPhone 5. LG, however, decided to avoid going down that road, and hence, Nexus 4 stuck to the plain old 3G bands.
The LG-manufactured Google Nexus 4 has kicked up quite a storm on the interwebs this morning, with the revelation of it packing in an LTE chip. The first tear-downs have revealed a Qualcomm multi-band LTE chip nestled within, but before any current or prospective Nexus 4 fans get too excited, it does not equate to a usable 4G LTE cellular connection. At least, not on its own.
The LG-manufactured Nexus 4 may only just have made an appearance over at the Google Play Store, but the modding and altering of the device has been going on for a good couple of weeks now. If you're into backing up, flashing ROMs, rooting and unlocking, you will be pleased to learn that version 1.0.0 of the Nexus 4 Toolkit has been compiled and is now available to download.
The standard of the smartphone snapper has increased dramatically over the past couple of years, to the stage where many rely upon their handset as their sole source of still images and videos. While companies have worked around many design caveats to offer optimal photo and video-taking experience, some issues have proved more difficult to smooth out than others, and just like the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III before it, it seems the LG-made Google Nexus 4 also suffers with the issue of purple haze.
Were you looking forward to picking up a brand spanking new Nexus 4 smartphone today? You may have been lucky, but chances are, you probably weren't thanks to sell-outs and ordering issues worldwide.
