I'm still interested by the fate of LTE in the Nexus 4- it has the hardware for it, but it's manually disabled. When T-Mobile launch their LTE network it'll be interesting to see if any hacks will re-enable it. It could end up being one of the first technically unlicensed LTE devices.
I'm not sure LTE is much more than a no-brainer for anything handheld going forward from Q3. Somehow it seems the Nexus 4 ended up with two (or possibly even three LTE) implementations on the circuit board and it's not even an advertised feature.
If US carriers insist on locking down 4G LTE onto expensive multi-year contract subsidized devces, Intel may not have to worry for another generation. So the real wildcard here is, I think, T-Mobile.
ArsTechnica (IIRC) had LTE working on their Nexus 4 in Canada. The chipset is fine, the phone simply doesn't have the power amplifiers required for all the LTE bands.
> I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still immature
Not to mention the speeds with LTE are not actually that much faster than T-Mo's HSPA+, especially now that there are lots of iPhone 5s in the wild using up LTE bandwidth: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the-nexus-4-the-v... (the data in the post is pre-iPhone 5, so the LTE speeds will be much slower than even that now)
I am very excited about the new Nexus, and because of this I want to take additional care and try not to be too much biased: my opinion is that not having LTE cannot be considered a feature; I still don't care, as I live outside the USA and LTE is absurdly expensive here, but LTE is still a technology that offers better speeds.
I understand the reasons for the choice, and I endorse them completely, but there's not pride in ignoring your own shortcomings, while pointing them out on others. Simply put, the Nexus 4 is an exceptional phone for HSPA+ networks, and considering the price, it is even more so. People complaining about missing LTE can just pick another phone that meets their specifications.
Photospheres, as well, are nothing revolutionary, they've been doing them for years on WPs and iPhones using photosynth. Nevertheless they are neat, and I enjoy a lot the fact that I can now use them, share them, contribute to street view, etc.
He was talking about the Galaxy Nexus, which does have LTE.
> battery life
That's a function of the functionality - I'd rather be able to synchronize my reading lists in the background and forgo a bit of the battery life. I rarely use more than half of my Galaxy Nexus's battery on a given day, so that's fine for me.
> screen quality
No idea where you're getting this from. Both screens are fine, but the Galaxy Nexus's screen size is the major difference.
The Anandtech article didn't test out 1800MHz, but I would guess that 1800MHz (band 3) would be the second most likely band to be supported on the Nexus 4. It is a band until now normally used for GSM.
The other bands he has tested for aren't really in use for LTE yet.
I was a bit confused as to why this was remarkable. I found out that the Nexus 4 isn't billed as supporting LTE, so this unofficial support is essentially "for free".
No, but but they have massive plans to rollout LTE. LTE is a 4G technology with 4G being defined as IP address + data stream, no fancypants, no application (ala telephonery) has specific own physical/link layer.
Eg, all of T-Mobile, which is the only official launch partner for the Nexus 4 in the US.
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