As soon as Android 4.4 KitKat was formally announced, it was certain that the newer Nexus devices will definitely be getting the new version of the operation system. Nexus 4, the one year old Nexus flagship that is still plenty powerful, obviously made the cut, but it didn’t get anOTA update for the latest Android version as soon as it surfaced on Nexus 5. All we kept hearing was “a few weeks” without any definitive availability date. Well, we guess it’s pretty close now, as Google has posted the factory images for Android 4.4 KitKat for the Nexus 4 onits developer portal.
The availability of a factory image is a good sign that soon, users all over the world will start seeing the OTA update notifications and hence, can taste the latest new dessert from Google. From a technical perspective, there’s hardly any difference between a factory image and an OTA update, other than the fact that the formers are much more useful when it comes to restoring a bricked device, or when you want to go back to how things were after having played around with your Nexus device for a while. It’s like giving your phone a fresh start, so to speak.

Android 4.4 KitKat factory images for quite a few devices have started showing up, and in case you don’t want to wait any longer to get your hands on the OTA update, feel free to grab the factory image from the links which we’ve embedded below for your Nexus device. There are a couple of caveats, however, that you might end up wiping your device in the process, and that you won’t get what is being called the “Google Experience Launcher”, or GEL, on the Nexus 4.
Nexus lineup
It isn’t clear whether it’s missing a feature on the Nexus 4 altogether or just in the factory image, but along with GEL, you also don’t get access to Google Now by swiping in from the left of the display, and no new wallpapers or transparency as we saw on the Nexus 5 with KitKat. Maybe some later builds might carry these, but for now, these things appear to be exclusive to the Nexus 5. Not wise, but hey, that’s what it is.