The Verge: Based on the LG Optimus G the Google Nexus 4 sports a 4.7-inch 1280×768 IPS+ LCD. The touch sen­sor is opti­cally lam­i­nated to the Gorilla Glass 2 cover glass, which LG calls G2 tech­nol­ogy, that reduces air gaps and brings the pix­els closer to your eyes. Of course a more advanced tech­nol­ogy is to inte­grate the touch sen­sors directly into the LCD called in-cell touch, which is found in the iPhone 5. The next step toward elim­i­nat­ing obstruc­tions between pix­els and our eyes will be to harden the top polar­izer and elim­i­nate the cover glass. I dis­like the thick, heavy, and costly cover glass solu­tion. The only time a cover glassed gad­get looks nice is when it’s off.

Google claims the Qualcomm 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU that’s pow­er­ing the Nexus 4 is the fastest on the mar­ket today. Other specs include: 2GB RAM, 8MP cam­era (back) / 1.3MP cam­era (front), Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi BGN. The 8GB Nexus 4 will be priced at US$299 while the 16GB is $349 and avail­able November 13. (Note: These are unlocked, off-contract, full retail prices.) One obvi­ous fea­ture is lack­ing though: LTE. Why? It’s com­pli­cated; read at your own risk.

Update 2012.10.30: Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica:

If you can get past the lack of LTE, the Nexus 4 (and by exten­sion the Optimus G, which will give you LTE but take away the Nexus line’s guar­an­teed updates) is eas­ily the fastest Android hand­set you can buy today.

Most apps depend on an Internet con­nec­tion and the faster that con­nec­tion the bet­ter the expe­ri­ence. Without LTE is the Nexus 4 really the fastest?

Update 2012.11.02: via John Gruber. Matthew Panzarino, The Next Web:

The iPhone 5 offers zero con­ces­sions to car­ri­ers in the form of inter­face cus­tomiza­tions or pre-installed soft­ware, some­thing that Google has done its best to avoid on the Nexus line (and bravo to them for that). And yet, the iPhone 5 is avail­able in LTE around the world. Apple had to fit the lat­est low-power chips in the device and ship three dif­fer­ent mod­els to do it, but they did it and with a min­i­mum of cus­tomer con­fu­sion. People don’t know how much effort it took for Apple to make LTE work every­where, they just know that they can buy one locally and use it on an LTE net­work. It is com­pletely pos­si­ble to make this hap­pen, Google just didn’t put forth the effort.

I’m afraid there seems to be a lot of truth to what Panzarino is say­ing here. If Apple did it with the iPhone 5, why didn’t Google with the Nexus 4? Maybe Google couldn’t for some rea­son. Let’s get back to dis­plays. Joshua Topolsky, The Verge:

Speaking of improve­ments, the dis­play on this phone is big upgrade over the Galaxy Nexus’ Super AMOLED screen, which was often far too dim when set to auto-brightness, seemed very over-saturated, and did a some­what poor job of cleanly repro­duc­ing text. The 4.7-inch, 1280 x 768 LCD dis­play of the Nexus 4 has no such trou­ble, pro­duc­ing images that are clean and crisp in just about any light setting.

Topolsky men­tioned one nig­gle: col­ors are a bit washed out. Accurate col­ors can look washed out if we’re used to blown out col­ors. We’ll have to wait and see for test results to know for sure.

Update 2012.11.18: According to iFixit the 4.7-inch 1280×768 IPS LCD is man­u­fac­tured by LG Display with model num­ber LH467WX1. The touch con­troller is Synaptics S7020A.