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jimmthang

but it doesn't even have 4g!

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This could also be the source of the delays. Google could be trying to pull the LTE chip from the device.

Why would that cause a delay if it was never designed with it in the first place?

iFixit's teardown showed that the device does have a 4G LTE chip, just not an antenna.

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+4+Teardown/11781/3

Well why would they pull the chip if they launched it like that?

Why would they put in the chip if it didn't have an antenna?

I think T-Mobile is selling their HSPA+ as "4G", even though it's not using LTE yet. So it's not that no GSM carriers would advertise the phone as "4G".

Perhaps they designed and/or manufactured the circuit boards before they had the frequencies all sorted out. Perhaps they need the chip in there for patent licensing reasons.

The real reason is that they went with the Qualcomm S4 SoC, which has an LTE modem on-die. It's likely that it would be too expensive to have Qualcomm manufacturer an LTE-less chip for one device.

According to http://www.qualcomm.com/chipsets/snapdragon the Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8064 has LTE "on select processors". But it's still a separate chip from from the WTR1605L LTE chip.

So the Nexus 4 may actually have two unused LTE implementations ?!

Now this boggles the mind. This could be explained by the Nexus 4 sharing the internals of the Optimus G, but why opt for the off-die LTE modem in the first place?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6474/nexus-4-includes-support-... Looks like the LTE does, in fact, work for "band 4 AWS". This is said to be the band T-Mobile will be deploying LTE in next year.

>Perhaps they need the chip in there for patent licensing reasons.

Actually, maybe someone can answer this. Does anyone know exactly what the cost is(both in licensing and materials) for a 4G LTE chip vs the antenna?

I doubt you could get a price quote for under 10,000 units.

The company to ask is iSuppli, they specialize in reverse costing. http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/Pages/Headlines.aspx

Probably because the device wasn't licensed by the FCC to transmit/receive on those frequencies :( http://www.mobilenapps.com/articles/5579/20121214/nexus-4-lt...

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