LG Nexus 4: the 4.7-inch stock Android classic with wireless charging
When Google handed the fourth Nexus slot to LG in late 2012, the brief was straightforward: deliver a clean reference device that showed off Android the way the search giant intended, without the bloatware and reskinning that manufacturers often layered on top. The result was a phone that married a generous 4.7-inch panel, the brand-new Snapdragon S4 Pro, and an inductive charging coil hidden under a glass back. In Australia, where Android adoption was climbing fast thanks to carrier subsidies and a thriving grey import scene, the LG Nexus 4 became a quiet favourite among purists.
Buyers in Sydney and Melbourne could grab the device outright through JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman, while Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone all stocked variants or offered it on $40 to $60 monthly plans with the usual handset repayments bundled in. The Nexus line had always carried a developer-leaning reputation, and Australian tinkerers on Whirlpool forums compared import prices, firmware build numbers, and unlockable bootloaders the way cricket fans compared batting averages.
The handset arrived just as Jelly Bean was settling into the wider market, and the timing mattered. Google promised timely updates direct from Mountain View rather than waiting for LG to repackage the OS, and that promise of unmediated software was the kind of pitch that landed well with Australian Android fans tired of waiting months for carrier-branded builds to trickle through.
Priced at roughly $499 AUD for the 8GB model and $599 AUD for the 16GB version at local retailers, the device undercut most flagships of the same era, which often demanded $800 or more once GST and carrier branding were factored in. That value positioning helped the LG Nexus 4 earn a reputation as the thinking buyer's flagship, and it remains a touchstone in conversations about stock Android.
A glass-bodied slab and its 4.7-inch panel
The hardware story starts with the screen itself, a 4.7-inch True HD IPS+ panel running at 1280 by 768 pixels. That works out to around 320 pixels per inch, which was sharp enough at the time to embarrass a few rivals still shipping qHD displays. Colours leaned a touch cool out of the box, but viewing angles were excellent, and the digitiser handled Australian summer outdoor glare better than the PenTile-faded screens that had defined earlier Nexus generations.
The body wrapped that screen in a black bezel, then slid into a glass-and-rubber frame that weighed 139 grams. The sparkly dotted glass back became something of a signature, shimmering under the harsh downlights of a Westfield food court or the fluorescent glow of an Officeworks phone aisle. Side-by-side with the chunkier Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime, the Nexus felt tighter and more grown-up.
| Feature | LG Nexus 4 | Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime | Nokia Lumia 640 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display | 4.7-inch True HD IPS+ | 5-inch TFT | 5-inch IPS LCD |
| Resolution | 1280 x 768 | 540 x 960 | 1280 x 720 |
| Processor | Snapdragon S4 Pro | Snapdragon 410 | Snapdragon 400 |
| RAM | 2 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| Rear camera | 8 MP | 8 MP | 8 MP |
| Wireless charging | Yes (Qi) | No | No |
| Operating system | Android 4.2 (stock) | Android 4.4 (TouchWiz) | Windows Phone 8.1 |
| Original AUD price | ~$499 (8GB) | ~$329 | ~$249 |
Build quality felt reassuringly dense, and the slightly curved back made the phone sit naturally in a hand still half-full of a flat white. There was no microSD slot, which drew some grumbles from Australian buyers used to expandable storage on cheaper imports, but the sealed approach kept the chassis tidy and reduced the rattle that some earlier Galaxy handsets suffered from.
Snapdragon silicon paired with timely updates
Inside, the Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon S4 Pro paired four Krait cores running up to 1.5 GHz with an Adreno 320 GPU and 2 GB of RAM. Those numbers do not sound like much a decade on, but in 2012 they pushed the Nexus 4 to the top of benchmark charts and through games that older dual-core Nexus devices struggled with.
The bigger story sat in software. Android 4.2 Jelly Bean arrived as the launch OS, and Google committed to rolling subsequent updates direct from the Play Store rather than dragging them through carrier certification labs. Australians who pre-registered on Google's Play Store mailing list sometimes received over-the-air pushes hours after American owners, a novelty that rankled rivals still running Android 4.0 on their flagship handsets.
Gesture typing, expandable notifications, and lock-screen widgets were Jelly Bean highlights, and the Nexus 4 was the cleanest way to experience them. Modders on the XDA Developers forum also picked the device up quickly, churning out custom kernels and ROMs that kept the phone relevant long after retail channels had moved on to the Nexus 5.
An 8-megapixel shooter with Photo Sphere tricks
Around the back, an 8-megapixel sensor sat behind an f/2.4 optic, paired with a single LED flash. Daylight shots looked crisp and well-balanced, and Google's image processing produced more natural colour than the saturated look favoured by Samsung's early Galaxy cameras. The standout software trick was Photo Sphere, which let users stitch together 360-degree panoramas by tilting the phone in a full arc.
Low-light performance remained the perennial weakness, with visible noise creeping into pub shots and bar interiors after sundown. The 1.9-megapixel front camera handled video calls adequately but did not win any selfie contests, a relevant point as Australian social media habits started pushing front camera quality up the priority list.
Compared with the budget-friendly Grand Prime, which leaned on its 5-megapixel front shooter to court a younger crowd, the Nexus targeted buyers who cared more about timely software than megapixel counts and who wanted a faster chipset to back up that cleaner operating system.
Battery life and the wireless charging curve
The non-removable 2100 mAh cell delivered a full day of moderate use for most Australian owners, though heavy 4G use between regional centres drained it faster than city commuting did. Call quality held up well on Telstra's 4G LTE band 3 deployment in capital cities, and standby drain was notably better than the Galaxy Nexus that preceded the device.
Wireless charging was the headline convenience feature. The LG Nexus 4 was one of the first mainstream Android phones to ship with Qi inductive charging built in, letting owners drop the device onto a charging pad rather than fiddle with a micro-USB cable in the dark. In an era before café tables in Melbourne's laneways were plastered with wireless pads, the feature felt almost futuristic, and third-party pads started appearing on eBay for under $30 AUD.
Charging speeds were not class-leading, and the phone did get warm during a top-up, but the convenience of plonking the handset onto a bedside pad before bed outweighed the slower rate for many buyers. Battery longevity did decline after a couple of years, a familiar story for the era, and replacement was not straightforward given the sealed glass back.
Price points and where Aussies could buy one
At launch, the LG Nexus 4 was sold outright through the Google Play Store in 8GB and 16GB trims, with Australian pricing arriving at roughly $499 and $599 AUD respectively. Carrier bundles appeared shortly after, with Telstra and Optus offering the device on contract terms ranging from $0 upfront with a $60 monthly plan to outright postpaid options that spread the cost over 24 months.
JB Hi-Fi stocked the handset with display units set up for hands-on testing, and Harvey Norman ran introductory bundles that included a wireless charging pad with early shipments. Officeworks later picked up accessories, and grey importers offered cheaper units sourced from Hong Kong and Singapore, though warranty support was patchy at best.
The value calculus was striking. A reader weighing the Nexus against the Nokia Lumia 640 saw a Lumia that was cheaper and offered expandable storage, but it ran Windows Phone 8.1 rather than Android, which made the choice ecosystem-dependent rather than purely spec-driven.
If you lived in a regional centre where Optus 4G had not yet rolled out, the Nexus still handled 3G HSPA+ capably for browsing and streaming, and Google's suite of apps, Maps, Drive, and YouTube, ran smoothly on the smaller data allowances common on mid-tier plans at the time.
If you came of age in the early Android era and wanted the cleanest possible software with the fewest carrier compromises, the LG Nexus 4 was a quietly compelling buy. Browse our archive of mid-2010s smartphone launches to see how this generation of handsets reshaped the local Android landscape across the Australian market, and revisit our other handset deep dives to compare it with the alternatives that defined the period.