Tech specs wreck: Details of Google's Nexus 5 smartphone leaked over internet

A leaked manual for Google's next flagship phone, the Nexus 5, shows a filled-out screen, a faster CPU, more memory and full 4G support, but no shocks, in the ongoing evolution of Android.

The manual, leaked to Android Police, is an engineering tome packed with technical specifications and debug procedures, enough to show that despite being the same size as the Nexus 4 the new handset adds quarter of an inch to the screen and takes the Snapdragon processor up to 2.3GHz.

The screen's resolution gets pushed up too. It's listed as 1920x1080 and measuring five inches across the diagonal, but beyond that there's not much to say. LTE support arrives, in bands suitable for EE's 4G deployment as well as the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands which are now being rolled out across the UK, offering the potential for 100Mb/s download should the networks permit it.

There's also support for the usual Wi-Fi standards and Bluetooth 4, and “wireless charging”. Exactly which flavour of charging is unspecified, but can safely be assumed to conform to the Qi standard already embraced by Google.

But the leak is more damaging than letting fandroids know what's coming, as it shows the board layouts and block diagrams for the handset – invaluable to competitors struggling to solve the same problems. The manual wouldn't let someone build a replica Nexus, but it does show engineering tricks and techniques LG has used to efficiently wire everything together, which is of enormous interest to those heading in the same direction.

LG has apparently requested Android Police remove the document itself, to stem the tide, but the nature of the internet means the leaked manual is easy to find with the right search string. One can be certain that engineers from every other phone manufacturer are already delighting in the insights offered. ®