Nexus 5 is an entirely different handset from the rumoured Motorola X-Phone and Google is building its new flagship with the help of a familiar partner - LG from South Korea.

The two firms' earlier collaboration produced the Nexus 4, which was warmly accepted worldwide but fell short of sales target due to serious supply chain issues that some analyst thought would draw the two companies far apart.

All is well, it turned out, and LG apparently won back enough confidence points from Google for it to take charge of the hardware responsibilities for the Nexus 5, which expectedly will bump up the already impressive specs brandished by the Nexus 4.

The deal, according to the Korea Times, was sealed during the recent stop of Google chair Larry Page to Seoul, South Korea, where he met with LG top honcho Bon-joon Koo.

The visit also led to another joint project that will see the release of an OLED television that bears the Google-LG branding, the same report said.

Yet the meat of the event is the likelihood that LG will once again handle the Nexus smartphone production duties, belying the earlier suggestions that Google is eyeing other players for the honour.

Sony, Motorola and HTC emerged as strong contenders but the latter emerged as the One favoured by experts due to its acclaimed flagship - the HTC One.

At any rate, LG's take on Nexus 5 will likely produce a 5-inch handset that will adequately challenge today's crop of oversized smartphones - the One, the Galaxy S4 and the upcoming Galaxy Note 3 among them.

Specs are still scarce though numerous concepts have pointed to either Snapdragon or Tegra CPU that hums away easily on a speed beyond the 2.0GHz mark. The device also expected to be in 1080p Full HD with insanely great camera features, which is a mainstay of Nexus 5 rumours.

Also, the Nexus 5 will get a vanilla serving of the Android version, which could be Jelly Bean 4.3 or Key Lime Pie.

The safe bet for its release date is around the same time that the Nexus 4 was pushed out in 2012, which is November 2013. The smartphone is also believed to assume the same price modelling of its predecessor - at $US299 for the basic model.