LG Nexus 5 launching with Android 4.4 KitKat on 14 October?

LG Nexus 5 launching with Android 4.4 KitKat on 14 October?

According to Ausdroid and several other publications around the net, LG and Google will officially be taking the wraps off the LG Nexus 5 and Android 4.4 KitKat on 14 October. The timing makes sense given past Nexus events held by Google in October, but nothing has actually been confirmed by the company.

Past FCC filings noted the Nexus 5 features Qi wireless charging capabilities inside of the back cover, which will allow customers to place their device on a charging stone and forget cords. You'll find LTE bands (unlike the Nexus 4), NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and of course, CDMA / EVDO rev A, pentaband DC-HSPA+ and quadband GSM / EDGE.

The FCC documents further revealed a 4.96-inch diagonal for display, hence the Nexus 5 name, with a length and width of 131.9 mm x 68.2 mm. A Snapdragon 800 SoC was also mentioned.

With the LG Nexus 5 allegedly getting Android 4.4 KitKat in mid-October, this means other Nexus handsets will follow in subsequent days. Ausdroid says to expect updates in the fragmentation/screen resizing area, Miracast updates, new Gallery Visualisation, new APIs regarding animations, and new notification widgets. Perhaps most notably, the blue default colour scheme found in past versions of Android will be changed to other preset palette colours. 

Of course as we do with all rumours, we suggest you take this one with a healthy grain of salt. At any rate, an October release is sounding more than likely. 

Source: Ausdroid

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Nexus 7 finds Apple napping

Nexus 7 finds Apple napping

Google has beat Apple at its own Retina-display-thumping game. Meet the Nexus 7, the eye-popping 323-pixels-per-inch wonder.

It is, in a way, the (rumored) iPad Mini Retina wrapped in Android 4.3.

Here's the deal: If you can find most of the apps you need on Google's Play Store and would like a small tablet with the highest resolution display on any tablet to date (i.e., higher than the 9.7-inch Retina iPad and way higher than the iPad Mini), then the second-generation Nexus 7 may be a good choice.

How did this happen? Well, Google, Asus (the device manufacturer), and Japan Display Inc. (the display maker) have managed, for the first time, to slap a smartphone-density display on a small tablet.

Without getting too technical, the second-gen Nexus 7 uses a display technology (called low-temperature polysilicon, for those keeping score) from Japan Display that has been used, to date, only on phones like, ironically, Apple's iPhone 5 (which has a pixel density of 326, just slightly more than the new Nexus 7).

Maybe more ironically, Apple is considering the same technology for a future Mini Retina, according to Richard Shim, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch. When that Mini would appear ranges from sometime in October (optimistic) to early next year (pessimistic).

Analysts have told me that the 7-inch 1,920x1,200 display on the Nexus 7 may be the upper size limit for Japan Display's ultra-high-resolution technology -- at the moment. In other words, JDI's tech is not quite ready to scale up to the larger 7.9-inch screen on the Mini.

Whatever the case, you can pick up the new Nexus 7 for $230 at some Best Buy stores as of Friday. That's about $100 less than Apple's cheapest Mini (which I also own) but with a much better screen and a faster (quad-core) processor.

That's a really tough hardware/price proposition for Apple to beat, in my opinion.

I like the Mini a lot. I'm not sure yet but I may like the second-gen Nexus 7 better.

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