Prior to Google I/O there were rumours of a White Whale.. no.. a white Nexus 4. In fact, we’ve been covering these “White Nexus 4” rumours for months, going back as far as November last year.
It seems that this rumour has finally turned out to be correct. The good folk over at Android and Me have, in their hot little hands, that elusive white Nexus 4, and besides a lick of paint, it’s the same Nexus 4. There’s no LTE (sorry, that rumour is bust for now), and no other changes whatsoever, just that it comes in white.
Oh, there is one other change. The white Nexus 4 will hit the Google Play store on 10 June, and it will launch with Android 4.3. This seems to be pretty well confirmed information, but we’ll wait till we see it before we call it a definite.
Sadly, Android 4.3 wasn’t announced (or really even mentioned) at Google I/O this year, and the feeling around the place was that it had been deliberately bumped from the show. Android And Me’s sources within Google said they wanted to demonstrate their ability to roll out new services and APIs without upgrading the Android firmware itself, and as we’ve seen with the launch of Google Play Games, Hangouts and the new sync services, this can certainly be done.
Equally sad is that we don’t know anything much about what Android 4.3 will bring, but it seems it will be a fairly minor update like 4.2 was to 4.1. The API version should be bumped up a notch, and the widely anticipated Bluetooth stack update containing support for Bluetooth Smart (aka Bluetooth Low Energy) should be a part. It seems likely (though there’s no news on this front) that the Android 4.3 update will be released for all current Nexus devices (4, 7 and 10) when it comes.
