Prototype phones accidentally left behind in some bar might sound like an Apple story, but this time the protagonist is Google's LG-made Nexus 4 smartphone.
A bartender at the 500 Club in San Francisco's Mission District found the lost cell phone last week, and did not recognize the nondescript black handset with Google and LG logos on its back.
"I don't know anything about this stuff, but I know enough to know this phone was different," said the bartender, Jamin Barton, according to Wired. More interestingly, nobody returned to the bar to recover the lost handset.
The smartphone was locked and had no SIM card to activate it, but it did sport a "no for sale" sticker on the back. Barton showed the handset to a more tech-savvy customer called Dave, who immediately recognized it as the upcoming Nexus 4. Google was expected to unveil the new Nexus smartphone at an event in New York on Oct 29, but the event appears to have been canceled "due to Hurricane Sandy."
After identifying the smartphone, Dave agreed to make some calls to Google and inquire about the situation. He called Barton the next day and told him that Google did indeed lose a phone.
"You just got a guy fired... The Google police are coming," he told Barton.
"I probably shouldn't gave shown it to him. But I did. He didn't work for Google, but Google had him pretty worked up," called the bartender. "They told him he could be an accessory or something."
The Google Nexus 4 manufactured by LG will reportedly sport a 4.7-inch, 1280 x 768 display, pack a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU, and an 8-megapixel camera. The smartphone is also rumored to come with Google's yet-unreleased Android 4.2 operating system, unofficially dubbed "Key Lime Pie."
According to Wired, Brian Katz, Google's global investigations and intelligence manager, was headed to the 500 Club to address the issue. Katz insisted on meeting Barton ASAP, but the bartender refused and told co-workers that he felt harassed.
Katz reportedly offered Barton a free phone if he agreed to keep quiet about the incident and not publush photos or discuss the phone until after the company unveils it. Wired, however, paid Barton a freelance fee for the photos of the lost Google Nexus 4.
