A bunch of developers over on the XDA forums have been tinkering with the Nexus 4 to see if they can persuade it to play nice with LTE. Turns out that despite a lack of signal amplifier and filter it can sort of handle the high-speed connection.
The developers have shown that LG’s phone can be forced onto an LTE network — but only one one that uses LTE band 4, which runs at 1700MHz and 2100MHz. No Australian carrier currently uses either of those to provide 4G services.
The finding builds on Anandtech’s claims from last week:
“Band 4 (AWS) could essentially be supported with the power amplifiers and transceiver that already are onboard the Nexus 4, but again it ultimately comes down to a particular OEM choice whether these get supported.”
And it can! The speed boost over HSPA seems modest, but it’s there. Clearly Google opted out of providing LTE support as standard — presumably because of it being a pain in the arse to arrange internationally — but the tweak remains a project for the tinkerer. [XDA Developers via Verge]