A prototype Lexus 4 smartphone, marked “not for sale” on the back, was found by a bartender at the 500 Club in San Francisco. Of course they did what any good geek civilian would do – they took pictures of it to post online. Afterward they contacted Google who offered the bartender a free phone if he would keep the unannounced smartphone under wraps. Meanwhile, a patron at the bar, a local “tech freak”, recognized the phone as the unannounced Nexus 4, contacted Google to report the find, and then sort of freaked out about it.
The bartender explained:
“I probably shouldn’t have shown it to him. But I did. He didn’t work for Google, but Google had him pretty worked up. They told him he could be an accessory or something.”
The Nexus 4 is Google’s flagship phone (designed in a partnership by Google and LG to showcase Google’s next generation Android OS). Manufactured by LG, the Nexus 4 will have a 4.7-inch, 1280 x 768 display, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU, and an 8-megapixel rear camera. The Nexus 4 is also rumored to ship running Google’s as-yet-unreleased Android 4.2 operating system. It was to be announced on Monday but Hurricane Sandy showed up and spoiled the geek party.