The announcement this morning, of an event at Google next Wednesday – Thursday AEST – is rumoured to be the event where Android 4.3 is officially announced – along with a new Nexus 7 and possibly the Moto X.
But instead of having to wait for the inevitably slow rollout of Android 4.3 to your Nexus 4, there is both a TWRP Recovery backup as well as a System Dump floating around the internet. The build number is JWR66N – the same as was seen leaked for the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition – with the J indicating that it is still Jelly Bean.
First up, Paul O’brien from Modaco, spotted a TWRP backup of Android 4.3 for the Nexus 4 on an XDA-Developers thread. Unfortunately not a flashable file, so you will need to have TWRP installed on your Nexus 4. The main file is around 540MB in size if you want to download it.
Alternatively, Android Police have provided a couple of mirrors to the full System Dump for you to play with.
So far the radio and bootloader are missing, but the source of the leak has promised that they will be delivered tomorrow. It will only be a matter of time before a fully flashable version is available.
Will you download this leak to play with?
Why is the rollout “inevitably slow”? I thought the point of Nexus devices was they got new Android versions more or less straight away?
I don’t think the release will be “slow” if 4.3 is announced on the 24th of July.
4.1 JellyBean was announced at Google I/O on 27th of June 2012, and released on the 9th of July.
4.2 was to be announced on the 29th of October 2012 (but was disrupted by a storm in New York) and released on the 13th of November 2012.
So if 4.3 is announced on the 24th of July, then I would expect it to be released with in a fortnight, say by August 7th.
I think he means why slow to get to your handset not release.
The update does not hit every nexus device at once, it is staged in groups so that there is not a massive hit on the servers. The 4.2.2 update took over a week after it was released to appear on my nexus 4 due to this.
“Over a week after it was released to appear on my Nexus 4”.
Come on Chris, 3 weeks from announcement to being on your phone, not bad I think!