Google has taken the covers off the Nexus 5, its latest smartphone and the successor to the popular Nexus 4. Without too much fanfare the handset was revealed mere hours before it goes on sale on 1 November in the UK at Carphone Warehouse and O2. 

The handset features a 5-inch 1920 × 1080 display (445 ppi), 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 8-megapixel rear-facing OIS camera, and 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. It can come with either 16GB or 32GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi (2.4G/5G) 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, NFC (Android Beam), and Bluetooth 4.0.

As for ports and connectors it's SlimPort enabled, has 3.5mm stereo audio jack, Dual microphones, ceramic power and volume buttons. The weight of the handset will be 130 g and dimensions are 69.17 x 137.84 x 8.59mm.

Also confirmed for the handset is the latest Google mobile operating system, Android 4.4 KitKat. It will offer a transparent app launcher at the bottom, a redesigned Gmail and Camera icon, and a bigger focus on Android TV. Hangouts has replaced SMS on the home screen, too.

The camera is now equipped with Photo Sphere for knitted 360-degree shots, HDR+ which takes burst shots and automatically choses the best, and Auto Awesome which appears to improve photos in your library to share - much like Google+ does.

The Google Nexus 5, on sale 1 November, will cost £295 with 16GB. It will come in white or black.

Mobile operator O2 says that it will be exclusively selling a 32GB version of the phone. It will be available on O2’s future-proof O2 Refresh tariff from free on a £32 a month plan, offering 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 750MB of data.