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Say hello to the vibrant neon-red Nexus 5 (pictures)

Google paints a fresh red coat on its flagship Nexus 5 and it's as eye-catching as you'd expect.

Lynn La
Lynn La covers mobile reviews and news. She previously wrote for The Sacramento Bee, Macworld and The Global Post.
Lynn La
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1 of 12 Josh Miller/CNET

Google's red-hot Nexus 5

Initially launched in black and white color variations, Google's popular marquee smartphone, the Nexus 5, is now available in a searing shade of red. Still priced at $349 (16GB) or $399 (32GB) at the Play store, this unlocked 4G LTE handset is also sold through Sprint and T-Mobile.

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2 of 12 Josh Miller/CNET

Red around the edges

Appearing more orange-red or neon-red than crimson, the Nexus 5's new color variant is vibrant. It also has a 4.95-inch Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display with a 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution and 445ppi.

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8MP camera in the back

On the back is a 8-megapixel camera that can record 1080p full HD video.

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Black keys that stand out

The control buttons are made out of ceramic, and unlike the previous Nexus 4, they don't have soft, rounded edges.

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Smooth matte texture

With the 5, Google has done away with the lustrous, tile-patterned back that we saw previously, and replaced it with a matte material.

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Still compact and light

The device measures 5.43 inches tall, 2.72 inches wide, 0.34 inch thick, and weighs 4.59 ounces.

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A view from the top

The top edge houses the 3.5mm headphone jack.

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Ships with Android 4.4.2

Of course, a Nexus just wouldn't be a Nexus without it running the latest edition of Android. When we received our unit, the red unit shipped with Android 4.4.2 KitKat.

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Same powerful innards

The handset is powered by a quad-core 2.26GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, and a 450MHz Adreno 330 GPU.

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Sizeable battery inside

Additional features include a 2,300mAh battery, 2GB of RAM, and support for 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz and 5GHz) dual-band Wi-Fi.

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No expandable memory

It also has Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC, and built-in wireless charging. Like most Nexus phones before it, the Nexus 5 doesn't have a microSD card slot.

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Big Red customers seeing red

Unlike its predecessor, the Nexus 5 also supports multiple bands for 4G LTE. While this makes it compatible with AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, the device is unfortunately not available to Verizon customers.

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