On October 29, 2012, Google announced the Nexus 4 and scheduled its launch for November 13, 2012.

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The phone was made available for purchase on the Google Play online store in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, and Australia. Stock sold out quickly, in some markets within minutes of release.[17][18][19][20] The phone became available in the Play store again on January 29, 2013,[17] and since then has had no major supply issues.[21] The Nexus 4 was also made available through industry-standard means, via phone operators and retailers such as the Carphone Warehouse. Starting the following day, November 14, 2012, T-Mobile USA stores would sell the 16 GB model.[22] On Thanksgiving morning, Google linked those customers browsing the Nexus 4 product page over to the online store of T-Mobile.com. Within hours, T-Mobile's online stock was sold out.[23] Europe, Central and South America, Asia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Middle East were to receive Nexus 4 by the end of November 2012 in what Google referred to as "offline availability",[24]presumably meaning availability in brick and mortar stores and other retail stores, instead of the Google Play store. The phone was initially unavailable in South Korea due to carrier opposition, purportedly over the lack of LTE support.[25] However, an online request for the Nexus 4 launch by KT Telecom President Pyo Hyunmyung[26] led to LG's announcement that they were in talks with Google about the issue as of November 22, 2012.[27][28] Official sales figures are not available from Google or LG, but it did say that the number hackers came up with a few weeks beforehand, or over 375,000 units, is a lot lower than the actual figure. [29] In April 2013, images were revealed that suggest a minor hardware revision to the Nexus 4. In the pictures, the handset presents two bumps on its bottom that would serve the purpose of slightly raising it to avoid muffling the internal speaker when the phone is laid down on a flat surface. Also, the size of the transparent opening around the rear camera was reduced. [30]