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Speculation continues unabated about what Google will unveil at its planned Oct. 29 press event in New York City, but now the world knows of one item that’s likely to be announced: a new LG Nexus 4 smartphone running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
Details for the new phone, which would be LG’s first entry into Google’s Nexus line, were apparently leaked by a U.K.-based smartphone retailer, Carphone Warehouse, which inadvertently listed the phone as available for preorders on its Website, according to a report from The Verge.
“An entirely official-looking preorder page has been put up for the handset, whose display is said to measure 4.7 inches diagonally with a 1280 x 768 resolution,” reported The Verge. “Other salient features include Android 4.2, still called Jelly Bean, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, NFC and an 8-megapixel camera. Looking into the more detailed spec sheet, the Nexus 4 is listed as being 9.1mm thick and is offered with 8GB of on-board storage.”
Android Jelly Bean 4.2 is also expected to be shown off and unveiled at the gala, including a new feature called “Gesture Typing,” which allows users to input text by swiping across the screen and dragging a finger across the screen, letter to letter, according to the report.
The new phone was reportedly priced at 390 British Pounds, or about $628, in the Carphone Warehouse inventory system, according to the story.
Later on Oct. 25, the “leaked” information for the Nexus 4 phone could not be found on the Carphone Warehouse Website after someone apparently discovered the mistake. The Verge report said the phones would be available starting Oct. 30, the day after Google’s press event.
The Google New York product splash is expected to be an Android-centric event, which could also include a 32GB version of its Nexus 7 tablet, according to rumors. The event will kick off at 10 a.m. EDT at New York’s Basketball City at Pier 36 site. The announcement will also be streamed live on YouTube, according to the press invite.
Google’s event will be held on the same day as Microsoft’s launch of Windows Phone 8, the next generation of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system.
There is also the possibility that the announcement could concern a tablet device, as it comes after Apple’s Oct. 23 introduction of the iPad Mini, a smaller version of its popular iPad tablet.
Also rumored to makes its debut at the Google press event is the new 10.1-inch high-end Android Nexus tablet that will be co-branded with Samsung. The 10.1-inch tablet will boast a pixel density that is higher than Apple’s third-generation iPad, with a 2560×1600 display that has about 299 pixels per inch, according to earlier reports. That is higher than the 264 PPI on the 9.7-inch 2048×1536 Retina iPad.
The machines are rumored to sell for more than Google’s existing $199 Nexus 7, as well as higher than Google’s upcoming low-end $99 machine.
A co-branded device won’t be the first such partnership arrangement for Google, which this summer launched its new Asus-built Nexus 7 tablet. Samsung already builds the Galaxy Nexus smartphone using Google’s Android operating system.
Google’s Android has been booming in 2012. In September, the company announced that Android device activations have hit the 500 million mark globally, while adding about 1.3 million new activations a day.
In May, an Ovum report projected that Android will dominate the smartphone market through 2017.
Ovum said it expects Android to hold 48 percent of the smartphone market by 2017, while growing at a slower pace than it has recently. In 2011, Android’s share jumped to 44 percent, up from 2010’s 17 percent. Apple is expected to control a 27 percent share in 2017, up from 2011’s 23 percent share, with remaining smartphone players following at a generous distance.