[holymadness]

It's more than faintly embarrassing for a grown man to so completely identify with a corporation and a brand that he would take the time to write an advertisement for its products, complete with stock photos, quotes from press releases, and links for purchasing(!). No less so for the faithful chorus that repeats these plaudits before ever having used one themselves or read a review. I nevertheless note with approval that this group is in the minority in this thread.

In my opinion, there should never have been a 8GB N4, but Google probably saw that the 8GB N7 was selling very well and felt that reducing the price as much as possible would appeal to significant market segments. There are a lot of people who only use their smartphones as feature phones, and would be perfectly content with a lower capacity device.

Tubemonkey's link gives the right reason for why LTE is missing from the N4, but fails to mention that Google is responsible for its own powerlessness in negotiations with the carriers. They sold their soul for market share five years ago and are now reaping the consequences of that choice, which are sadly anti-consumer.

To be honest, I would be very happy if Google sold millions and millions of Nexus phones. Anything that can get people off 2- and 3-year contracts and break the power of the carriers is an absolute good. I don't think it will happen, sadly, because most people still buy their phone through their carrier and not directly from a vendor. There is also the difficulty of buying something you don't have a chance to touch, feel, and experiment with in store. Perhaps Google should establish a few pop-up stores, like Microsoft has for the Surface.