Google Nexus 4 Smartphone to Sell Contract-free for $299

Google may have been forced to cancel its New York City launch event for the Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Nexus 4, but that didn't stop the company from launching all three on time. The search giant announced two new tablets and a brand new Nexus 4 smartphone this afternoon.

Developed in collaboration with LG (a first for the South Korean company), the Nexus 4 packs a 4.7-inch 1280x768 IPS display (320 ppi), Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 8GB or 16GB of storage, an 8-megapixel camera (1.3-megapixel camera up front), a 2,100mAh Li-Polymer battery, NFC, and Android 4.2. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't have support for 4G LTE, nor does it allow for external storage via MicroSD, which means you're stuck with the capacity you choose at check out.

"This is the first time we collaborated with LG to build a Nexus device," said Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content at Google. "They brought an extraordinary amount of talent to the project, and the result is a feature-packed device that feels great in your hand, and blazingly fast under the hood."

The Nexus 4 isn't going to be available just yet. Google says it will launch in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Spain and Australia through Google Play on November 13. If you prefer to buy in store, you can expect offline availability in Europe, Central/South Americas, Asia, CIS and the Middle East from the end of November. Pricewise, in the U.S., the phone will sell for $299 or $349 (8GB and 16GB, respectively) contract-free. If you're willing to sign a 2-year agreement with T-Mobile, you can take that price down to $199.

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