Nexus 5 passes through Brazil's FCC-equivalent, causes even more confusion

Filings for a device codenamedLG-821 from Anatel, Brazil's telecom regulator, have been unearthed,suggesting that the Brazilian market may be getting its very ownversion of the upcoming Nexus 5. Before we get into the specificinformation that the filing brings to our attention, lets just holdoff for a minute longer and delve into what this could mean.

If you're at all aware of howGoogle's highly sought-after Nexus 4 was distributed, you'll probablyknow that availability was pretty limited (and not just because ofsupply hiccups). Namely, unless you lived in say, the States or theUK, for example, chances were that your local Play Store didn't havethe Nexus 4 to distribute it in the area. This has largely meant thatNexus 4-enthusiast had to find ways around this via unofficialchannels, severely impacting the reach of what continues to be apretty great device. Well, this new tidbit may indicate that theGoogle/LG duo is gearing for a more serious push this time around –a decision that is both very welcome, and one that makes a lot of business sense.

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Despite our wish to get back tosomething a fair bit more specific (and a great deal lessspeculative), we're nevertheless dragged into the guessing game onceagain, a game that the Nexus 5 has made us unwilling participants ofseveral times now.

Those of you keeping close tabs onthe Nexus 5 probably remember that it wasn't always as clear whetherthe LG-D821that recently passed through the FCC was the Nexus 5 after all.Rather, at certain points, it seemed very likely that it'sactually a variant of the LG G2 (on which the Nexus 5 is said tobe based, further complicating things). Another device, the LG-D820,now widely recognized as the actual Nexus 5, was also spotted through FCC and it sported dimensions of131.9x68.2mm, which is an improvement over the 133.9x68.7mm on theNexus 4, considering that the display grew to 4.96-inches. The realpuzzler here, however, is that the Anatel documents list the LG-D821at the much larger 137.9x69x8.6mm, very similar to the dimensions ofthe LG G2, again wrecking havoc to the nicely pieced together storywe had so far. What's even more confusing is the fact that Anatelalso published an image of the LG-D821's back and it wouldn't be a stretchby any means to say that this is the Nexus 5, not to mention that thedevices was listed as weighing 135g, against the LG G2's 143g (Nexus4 is 139g).

We'll leave you to draw theconclusions for yourself, though here's our (speculative) thinking.Firstly, a trivial error could very well be the cause of thedifferences in dimensions, though given the precision with whichthese tests are usually performed, we find that a little far-fetched.Alternatively, and this really strikes us as equally unlikely –Google/LG may be testing two versions of the Nexus 5, with differentscreen estate, for example. This is, unlikely, as we said, because weactually expect the Nexus 5 to see the light of day fairly soon –October has been hinted a lot.If this last part is indeed true, that means that, ultimately, itshouldn't be too long until the duo puts us out of our misery andannounces the darn thing already!

UPDATE: The title of the article has been edited, as a far more likely alternative explanation has been raised. Namely, LG has a manufacturing plant in Brazil, which may very likely be involved in the production in the upcoming Nexus 5. This means, in short, that the new Google phone is simply going through the routine, and it also probably means that a worldwide release of the Nexus 5 is, again, unlikely.