Google's Nexus 5 with KitKat: Everything you need to know about the pretty new Android

Halloween might be wrapping up, but it appears that Christmas may have come early for Android fans in the hunt for a great new smartphone. With surprisingly little fanfare, Google just announced the Nexus 5, the successor to last year's wildly popular Nexus 4, in a quiet little blog post.

Here's everything you need to know about the new Nexus 5:

What's so great about it?

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People loved the Nexus 4 because it ran the rawest distillation of Android available. (Also: No hardware home buttons, giving it a lean and clean look.) Usually third-party phone-makers like Samsung, HTC, and even Motorola pile on extraneous software that many critics feel bog the experience down with little hitches here and there. Not so with the Nexus.

The Nexus line shucks off bloatware to take advantage of all the things Google does really well: Gmail, Maps, Calendar, its voice assistant Google Now, and the like. As Dieter Bohn at The Verge notes, "Google's Nexus program has a simple goal: Make the best, purest, most perfect Android phone."

And since the Nexus 5 gets the purest form of Android available — in this case, Android 4.4 "KitKat" — the phone itself is first-in-line to incremental software updates directly from the Google mothership.

What's new with KitKat?

The OS is cleaned up. Everything looks better. The widgets tab from the app drawer is gone, too, and the little animations are all a little smoother — to say nothing of the scrolling. Hangouts also comes with SMS capabilities. More importantly, lots of excess code have been stripped away so that KitKat works on "lower end" Android phones. That might not apply to the Nexus 5 explicitly. But it's a big deal.

Google put together a nice little micro site where you can learn more about KitKat here.

What's new with the Nexus 5?

Well! The Nexus 5 is receiving all the next-gen hardware upgrades you'd probably expect from a phone at this stage in 2013: A 2.3Ghz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, two gigabytes of RAM, and the first Nexus device to get 4G/LTE.

Display-wise, it has a sizable five-inch screen at 1080p resolution, which is made of extra-durable Gorilla Glass. The bezel on the side was shrunken down, too, giving you a smidge more screen real estate. You can also charge it wirelessly.

It's unclear if the phone will come with the Moto X's always-on listening mode for Google Now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Google says the 2,300 mAH battery will provide 17 hours of talk time and up to 8.5 hours of internet time on WiFi.

Also, the almost unanimously criticized camera, which was widely perceived to be the Nexus 4's Achille's heel, appears to be greatly improved.

What's the camera like now?

It has, as Ars Technica notes, a "massive outer lens" on the back of the rear camera sensor — much bigger than the Nexus 4's more meager optics. On the megapixel front, it's a respectable 8-megapixel shooter. The real camera upgrades, though, may be on the software end.

Thanks to KitKat, the camera will reportedly have little niceties like optical image stabilization. One of the bigger upgrades — if you're into this sort of thing — is a new HDR+ mode. Essentially, this takes a burst of photos and automatically composites them together. Some people like this photo effect as a means to add vibrancy. But it's not for everyone.

How much will it cost?

This is the real nice part: Pricing starts $349 for the 16GB model — unlocked without a contract. That's a steal. And it's available today in the Google Play store.

What carriers can I get it on?

AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile — all the major players except for Verizon. Which stinks.