Nexus 5

A device which could be the Google Nexus 5 has leaked onto the web.

The device, which is seen lying face down on a table, bears LG branding but no other markings to speak of. It’s coloured white, has a metallic surround and what appears to be a smooth, glossy texture. The camera is at the top of the back panel centrally positioned in not too dissimilar a fashion to the LG G2 flagship but crucially it lacks the controls seen on LG’s own device and instead has a power and volume rocker along the left-hand side (if you were looking at the display).

The image, which cropped up on Techtastic, came from an anonymous LG tester, who also described the device as the ‘Nxs5’. Previous reports have strongly suggested LG will be behind the Nexus 5 after its success with the Nexus 4, but LG has gone on record saying that although it enjoyed being involved in the Nexus 4 project it has no plans to repeat the partnership. Of course, saying it doesn’t make it so, just the same as when HTC said it wasn’t making a Nexus Edition HTC One, what it actually meant was ‘yes’.

Such reports have also implied the Nexus 5 will be a tweaked and re-branded LG G2 with the rear buttons removed and it looks as though that’s exactly what we’ve got here.

Techtastic speculates that the Nexus 5 may trade in the LG G2’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core chip for a cheaper and less power-hungry Snapdragon 600. Meanwhile the 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation (OIS) may get the boot in favour of a 10-megapixel setup, perhaps similar to what we’ve seen on the Motorola Moto X. A Clear Pixel camera perhaps? There’s no word on whether the OIS would stay though. Apparently the idea is to try and keep the Nexus 5’s cost down to somewhere in the region of the Nexus 4’s affordable tag, though we’d expect it’d cost a wee bit more on the display alone.

It’s also been put forward that the Nexus 5 will be the debut handset for Google’s Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie build which is thought to be arriving in October.