A steady stream of recent rumors have suggested that Google's next volley of Nexus devices will include an LG smartphone, and a new gallery of photos posted by an xda-developers forum member might give us our first peek at what the handset is going to look like when it's announced in the coming weeks. The images show a phone that bears a striking resemblance to LG's recently-announced Optimus G flagship — as expected — which features a 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 display, a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, and a 13-megapixel primary camera.





More evidence lies in the phone's About screen, which shows a model number of "Fully JellyBean on Mako" — Nexus afficionados might recognize mako as a type of shark, and all Google-designed Android devices (dating back to the T-Mobile G1) have been named after fish. Labels on the phone also indicate a model number E960, which Droid Life notes has been attached to the mythical LG Nexus phone in previous rumors and has recently passed FCC testing.

Signs point to an announcement as soon as late October, so we won't have long to wait to find out whether LG's finally getting a shot at the Nexus program.

Update: As spotted by a Droid Life reader, Russian forum Baraholka has turned up shots of what looks to be the same phone stripped of a dummy case. This gives us a closer look at the device's Galaxy Nexus-style rounded shape and glossy back panel, which has an unusual texture a little different to that seen on AT&T's variant of the Optimus G.

Update 2: A second picture of the supposed LG Nexus' back shows the older "with Google" branding on it, as seen on the T-Mobile G1 and Motorola Droid. Previous Nexus phones like the Nexus One, Nexus S, and Galaxy Nexus simply have Google's logo on the rear. If the leaked photos prove accurate, the branding change could be indicative of the much-rumored modification of the Nexus program, but that's far from confirmed for the time being.



