Google together with LG have provided consumers with the Nexus 4 that as soon as it was released proved to be really popular among Android fans around the world. While not perfect the smartphone has some great specs for a relatively small un-subsidized price when compared to other handsets on offer, and it has been discovered the Nexus 4 has a sleeping 4G LTE chip under the hood.

A couple of days ago we brought you the news that the LG Nexus 4 had been given the teardown treatment, and with it was a list of the handsets components that included a Qualcomm WTR1605L Seven-Band 4G LTE chip. This has got some wondering if eventually someone from the hacking community could get the handset offering 4G LTE connectivity by tweaking the handsets software, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem that straight forward.

Some were disappointed when the handsets specifications were officially announced that there was no LTE connectivity, and after the discovery of 4G hardware in the Nexus 4 has got some thinking why the feature has not been activated. Trouble is during the teardown of the smartphone no LTE power amplifier was found that would basically turn electricity into the all important radio waves.

There was also no 4G LTE antenna found inside the handset either, and there have been cases of dormant LTE chips inside handsets before. Google obviously wanted LG to provide a handset that would be ideal for customers that didn’t want a subsidized device and keep it as cheap as possible.

LG has based the handset on the Optimus G so too save money would have used as many components as possible from the handset that were already in the process of being produced. There will be many users that are not too bothered about the lack of 4G connectivity, especially if their carrier of choice doesn’t have a suitable network to begin with.

Maybe we will see something that offers LTE compatibility in the coming months with other manufacturers rumoured to be bringing out Nexus hardware as well, but in the meantime they have to make do with a quad core powered Nexus 4 that also features a nice 4.7-inch True HD IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 768 and 2GB of RAM.

For the asking price that is a lot of smartphone for your money if you can manage to get hold of one. Are you worried about the lack of 4G LTE connectivity in the Nexus 4?