New Nexus device rumoured to launch by the end of October

The last Nexus smartphone, Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, was announced nearly a year ago, on October 18th, 2011. In addition to time officially flying, that it’s October 2012 points to the imminent launch of yet another Nexus phone — or five of them, if rumours pan out.

Either way, there are rumours that LG will provide the hardware for the new device, similar to the Optimus G in specs and style. That would mean the new Nexus would see a boost to a 1.5Ghz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC, 2GB RAM and a 13MP camera, all with LTE support.

Other rumours point to an iterative bump from the current Galaxy Nexus, with Samsung behind the helm. The model, GT-i9260, has been spotted a few times on Picasa, and looks to sport a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor and an 8MP camera — all other specs will be similar if not identical to the Galaxy Nexus. This “Galaxy Nexus 2” will come unlocked for $399 directly from Google, undercutting many of the current competition in terms of price, if not quite performance.

HTC is also expected to announce a 5-inch “Nexus 5” with a 1080p screen. We’ve seen renders of this device, but the likelihood of HTC launching such a device with the Nexus brand before it comes to market as a part of its One series is unlikely, but we’ll see. Nexus devices have never really been on the cutting edge of hardware performance, so we wouldn’t be surprised if HTC keeps that 1080p to itself for a little while longer.

As opposed to launching with a major new version of Android, ie. Key Lime Pie, the new Nexus phone is likely going to launch with Android 4.2, an iterative update to Jelly Bean; Android 4.1 Jelly Bean was launched this summer at Google I/O.

Either way, Andy Rubin is going to talk Android with All Things D’s Walt Mossberg on October 29th or 30th at the Dive Into Mobile conference in New York, so we’ll hear more about the next Nexus phone then, one way or another.

Source: Android & Me