By Keerthi Chandrashekar / Keerthi@latinospost.com (staff@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Oct 31, 2013 04:39 PM EDT

The rumormongering can finally stop: the Google Nexus 5 is here. Google announced the brand new smartphone would begin selling in the Google Play store Thursday.

The Google Nexus 5 starts at $349 for the 16GB model and jumps to $399 for the 32GB variant at the Google Play store. The handset is available in black and white, although interested buyers would do best to hurry; at the time of this article, the 8GB black model was sold out, and the rest of the models won't leave the warehouse until Nov. 8.

The Nexus 5 is manufactured by LG and features a 4.95-inch 1080p Full HD display, a beastly Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor clocked in at 2.3 GHz, 2GB RAM, and an Adreno 330 GPU capable of Open GL 3.0. The rear-facing camera is capable of taking stills at 8 megpixels and the front-facing camera shoots at 1.3 megapixels. The phone comes with Android 4.4 KitKat right out of the box.

The Nexus 5's 2,300mAh battery is rated for 17 hours of talk time, even with LTE turned on. Oh, that's right folks, the Nexus 5 has LTE, making it the first Nexus smartphone to be able to connect to the fastest networks around.

Not only that, the Nexus 5 houses components for both CDMA and GSM reception, and the phone has been announced for U.S. carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint, all of which will sell the device in stores. Sadly, Verizon doesn't seem to have jumped on board, but given the fact the Nexus 5 can operate on a CDMA network, don't be surprised to see Big Red change its mind depending on how the Nexus 5 sells.

Other than that, the Nexus 5 seems to be a more powerful version of the Nexus 4, with no real new game changers up its sleeve. Still, at its price tag, the Nexus 5 offers one of the most compelling unlocked smartphone options out there.

Are you planning on picking up a Google Nexus 5? If so , let us know why in the comments section below.