Google employees were seen testing Android L on the two-year-old Nexus 4, a sign that Google could be considering making its latest iteration to its mobile platform available on the two-year-old device.
Earlier this year, Google announced that it is working on Android L, largely rumored to be Android Lemon Meringue Pie (LMP), to be released to the public sometime later this year. However, the search company has already made Android L available in Developer Preview mode for those using the Nexus 5 smartphone and Nexus 7 tablet. Nexus 4 owners, unfortunately, were left behind in the dust.
But things are hopefully going to change for users who own a Nexus 4, as evidence posted on the Chromium section of Google's developer forums point to a number of Google employees using Android L on their Nexus 4.
"With my N4 on Android L, I could open these images in the native Android Apps (Galary/Google+Photos), that employs the native WebP support in Android," writes one user using a Google employee email address in one of the threads discussing Google's "Take a Tour" feature in Android L.
Another user with a Chromium.org email address was seen explicitly using Android L build LRW52G on his Nexus 4. The latest Android L build is LRW66E.
"Verified fix wrt #3 in 38.0.2125.4 / Nexus 4 / LRW52G," says the user.
Google made public the source code for Android L through its Android Open Source Project for its line of Nexus smartphones and tablets but only said that the final version will be available on the 2013 Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 models. It remains unclear if Google will also make Android L available on Nexus 4, given that the search company has previously stated that it only provides 18 months of updates to its devices.
However, with the new line of budget-friendly Android One smartphones to be released by Google's Indian partners Micromax, Karbonn and Spice also receiving Android L when it comes out this year, it seems unlikely that a device with better hardware to handle the new platform will not be updated.
Nexus 4 is powered by a Snapdragon quad-core S4 Pro chipset from Qualcomm with a quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU and Adreno 320 graphics card and runs on 2 GB of RAM, which should be more than enough to keep Android L flawlessly running on the device.
