Google’s cancelled event does not mean we will not get to hear all of the announcements it had planned for today. We don’t have our hands on the press release just yet, but the new Samsung-built Nexus 10 just popped up in a promo Google posted to its Nexus YouTube account. Google also now posted a product page for the Nexus 10 (as well as the new Nexus 4) to Google Play, with the ability to be notified of availability.
Google will officially begin selling the tablet on the Google Play store starting at $399 for the 16GB version ($499 for 32GB) on Nov. 13 in the following countries: U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Spain, and Canada.
T-Mobile’s event in New York City is obviously cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy, but the launch continues. Along with the $299 off-contract Nexus 4, T-Mobile is rounding out its Android lineup with the previously announced Note II, Samsung Galaxy S3, LG Optimus L9, and the lower-end Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G.
Some fun facts on data usage from the release:
Just three years ago, our smartphone customers consumed on average 25MB of data each month (primarily email). Contrast that with today when, on average, T-Mobile smartphone customers are consuming 847 MB of data each month.
Customers using our fastest, HSPA+ 42 capable smartphones, are averaging nearly 1.6 GB per month (an increase of 11% in < 60 days).
In fact, users of the recently launched Samsung Galaxy S III consume an average of 1.8 GB per month (an increase of 14% in < 60 days).
Google will allegedly launch a scan-and-match feature for its music service by this week at the earliest, according to a new report by CNET. (An update to this story is below.)
CNET defined the scan-and-match feature as “a process whereby a user’s music can be stored on the computer servers of a host service,” and it said the service could then online stream songs to “web-connected music players” to save users from “the time-consuming process of uploading each individual track to a host’s servers.”
Google was apparently set to unveil the feature today at a media event in New York City, but the impending havoc of Hurricane Sandy caused the search engine to cancel plans.
CNET previously reported that Google was close to “obtaining the licenses it needed to launch the service,” but Google will now launch the scan-and-match feature first in Europe, according to the website’s sources, with a United States landing scheduled for soon after.
It is not clear at this time if Google will offer the feature for free.
UPDATE: Google just unveiled three new additions to its Nexus lineup in a blog post on the official Google blog, where it further unveiled new Google Play content. Twentieth Century Fox movies—with new purchasing ability introduced for Canada, U.K., France, Spain, and Australia—are officially coming to the Google Play library. Google is also working with Time, Inc., to bring People, Time, and more popular publications to its marketplace.
As for music, the search giant partnered with Warner Music Group to include the label’s full catalog of songs and artists. It even confirmed the rumored scan-and-match feature would soon launch free:
Google’s media event originally scheduled to take place today in New York might have been cancelled, but we have LG and Google’s press release officially announcing the much-rumored Nexus 4. According to LG, the device will be available starting sometime in November “in select markets.”
Google has also now posted a product page for the Nexus 4 (as well as the new Nexus 10) to Google Play with full specs and the ability to be notified of availability. The Verge posted the video above to give an inside look at Google’s new Nexus 4 and Nexus 10.
“This is the first time we collaborated with LG to build a Nexus device,” said Andy Ru-bin, 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.”
LG said a GSM/HSPA+ compatible Nexus 4 will be sold unlocked on more than 200 carriers worldwide with 8GB and 16GB versions available to purchase from Google Play. That’s right, no LTE. Availability starts Nov. 13 in the following countries: U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, Spain, and Australia. Offline availability in Europe, Central/South Americas, Asia, CIS, and the Middle East will begin from the end of November.
Many of the specs we already heard from previous leaks, but LG confirmed the Nexus 4 would pack an 8-megapixcel camera, a 1.5GHz Quad-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Interestingly, as noted in the video above, Google is also including a new wireless charging dock with the Nexus 4.
As for its display—a 1280-by-768 4.7-inch True HD IPS Plus display that includes “Zerogap Touch technology”:
Gently curved glass edges allow your finger to slide smoothly on and off the 320ppi screen, while cutting edge display technology means you feel like you’re touch-ing every pixel, protected by scratch resistant Corning? Gorilla? Glass 2
A full list of specs from the press release is below: Read more
The Nexus 4 will feature wireless charging, according to a leaked quick-start manual for the much-discussed LG smartphone.
The manual specifically mentioned a “wireless charger”, as seen above, but it also said folks need to use “an approve model”. The manual further noted the 4-inch Android device would house an induction coil on the back, according to Pocket-Lint, which reported the story via Ubergizmo, between the top Nexus logo and the bottom LG logo. Check it out:
The LG Nexus 4 has been widely outed by third-party retailers, most notably Carphone Warehouse, and various other leaks. Just yesterday, reports surfaced that claimed the smartphone would boast a $504 price tag. The hefty cost allegedly comes with a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB of RAM, 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and more desirable specs.
Google was supposedly set to unveil the Nexus 4 at a media event in New York City today, but the search giant cancelled due to the impending havoc of Hurricane Sandy. While you wait for news of a rescheduled event, go below for a YouTube video that shows the widely leaked LG Nexus 4 in action.
