We know it’s important for many of you to get the latest Android software upgrades onto your phones as quickly as possible. With that in mind, we’re also introducing Test Drive, a new program that will allow consumers to take our major software upgrades for a trial run and provide valuable feedback before we launch the upgrade publicly. Starting with Android 4.2, the next iteration of Jelly Bean, we will release a preview of our software to a few hundred consumers that sign up for Test Drive. More details on how to sign-up and participate will be announced on the blog soon.

Going forward, we are going to focus our efforts so that we can deliver consistently high quality experiences to our users. Unfortunately that means not all phones will be getting upgrades. If you own a device that’s not getting upgraded, we’ve created the Motorola trade up program. The trade up program gives you $100 back on a new Motorola smartphone when you trade-in your old one–so you don’t have to miss out on Jelly Bean. For qualifying devices and more details, check out Motorola.com/tradeup.

"2013 will be the year of +Google+!"
Tuesday I had a breakfast session with +Bradley Horowitz. The event was hosted at +Google Nederland. As I wrote a Dutch article for +Dutchcowboys about it I promised that I would be making a summary and even attach my notes. Well, here it is!

- Currently no ads are displayed. No plans for the near future but all that can of course change
- A social networking site is not the best place to display advertisement
- Twitter and Facebook can only display ads on the social networking site
- Google uses the data collected via Google+ to target ads better on the different Google services
- Google+ helped Google remove the silos of all the different products
- A +1 for an add can lead to a higher CTR
- Not opening the API was a well thought through decision
- The API will be opened in the future (how far and when... no news)
- To ensure growth is organic, the API remained close. Users had to use Google+ instead of a 3rd party client
- You want to keep a conversation as authentic as possible. Spraying your update across multiple networks at once will not help you keep the conversation authentic
- Mobile is very important
- Half of the traffic comes from the mobile clients
- No new usage figures were shared (latest: Sept 17th: https://plus.google.com/+ArvidBux/posts/hn2upSwLVmN )
- Only certain numbers are shared every time as usage numbers are linked to Google's financial data. They can have an impact on the stock and earnings/revenue estimates
- Once Google publishes data once, they have to publish it every year
- Also for services like YouTube or Gmail not all figures are released
- 3rd parties can't measure it all as they don't have access to the real usage data. Besides that they don't measure mobile which is half of the traffic at Google+
- A merge between Voice, Google Talk, Hangouts and Messenger is on the roadmap
- Google News saw some features from Google+. Expect to see some Google News features in Google+
- Removing the silos for business users and making it easier for them to use Google products
- Only 20% of the planned features for Google+ have been rolled out
"+Bradley Horowitz: 2013 will be the year of +Google+!"

The Dutch article over at +Dutchcowboys:
http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/googleplus/26428

For the time being the Nexus 10 has but four widgets to choose from: Gmail, Calendar, Sound Search, and the digital clock. The 4 has all those same widgets, as well as one for messaging.

The widgets work just like homescreens - after you add a new widgets, just swipe through the lockscreen to access it. Tapping the widget itself will then highlight the unlock button - if you unlock the device while in this "mode," then you'll jump directly into the selected application. For example, if you highlight the Gmail widgets and then unlock the device, it will go straight into the Gmail app.
The other new feature is specific the Nexus 10: multiple user accounts. This feature has been a long time coming and will finally make it possible for a single family to easily share one tablet.

You can go back and read what I've written about the Nexus 4 hardware — in a word it's superb. In-hand feel is awesome thanks to the rubber ring running around the perimeter of the Nexus 4, and build quality is also very good. I've fully disassembled my Nexus 4 three times and put it together without issue, and the Nexus 4 has taken a few trips to the floor (my fault) without any adverse effects.

Finally, there's also the matter of price. For $299 you can get the latest and greatest hardware and 8 GB of storage, and for $349 you can get double that storage with 16 GB (12.92 GB usable). Both are fully unlocked and carrier-agnostic, and at those prices the Nexus 4 pretty much blows the doors off of any other unlocked or out of contract smartphones, which usually end up being priced at around $600 or more.

If you're an Android enthusiast, the Nexus 4 is obviously the phone to have right now. The combination of APQ8064 and MDM9x15 is excellent in spite of some unfortunate thermal throttling, and we'll be seeing many more Fusion 3 based devices in time at prices well above the Nexus 4 out of contract. At a fundamental level there is quite literally no better vehicle out there for Google to communicate its smartphone platform via than the yearly Nexus refresh. On its own, the Nexus 4 would otherwise be phenomenally great hardware. As a Nexus, it's a level even beyond that.

Google has come an exceptionally long way since that first Nexus One.