A source familiar with Google has told TechRadar that the much-anticipated Nexus 5 will be announced and shipped in the last week of October.
The Nexus 4 upgrade will also be "half the price" of the iPhone 5S, which should make the Nexus 5 price land around £275 ($473 AUS, $446 US) and in line with Google's low-price high-performance smartphone policy.
Our source was referring to UK shipping though we fully expect the rest of the world to also be getting it soon after launch.
If it's true that the Nexus 5 will match the 5S in performance then this could turn out to be a massive boon for Google as they look to capitalise on the popularity of the Nexus 4 while simultaneously undercutting Apple.
But what does "match the iPhone 5S" mean exactly? Will it ape certain features like the controversial fingerprint identity sensor? Or be available as a 64GB version unlike the Nexus 4? It's not clear but higher on-board storage would be preferable since the recently leaked photos appear to show no external memory slot.
Counting down the days
However it's likely we'll see something similar to the the iPhone's 64-bit A7 processor. Apple kicked off an arms race with the 64-bit processor announcement and no doubt Google and Samsung will follow suit. Even Samsung's co-chief executive Shin Jong-kyun has said that Samsung's next smartphones "will have 64-bit processing functionality".
If this is the case then we may see the Nexus 5 housing 4GB of RAM in an attempt to future-proof the device and create a desktop-like experience, although previous reports have suggested around 3GB - which is plenty.
It's interesting that the source directly mentioned the iPhone to describe the capabilities of the Nexus 5. This could be an insight into Google's future strategy of taking some of Apple's 29% UK market instead of becoming the dominant Android device and eating into Samsung's huge 36.2% market share.
- To keep up-to-date with the latest news and rumours, check out our Nexus 5 hub page.
