SAN FRAN­CIS­CO–Google is sell­ing a new An­droid smart­phone that it hopes will be­come more like a clair­voy­ant friend than a piece of hard­ware.The Nexus 5 phone is the first de­vice to run on Kit Kat, the lat­est ver­sion of Google's An­droid op­er­at­ing sys­tem.As with pre­vi­ous Nexus phones, the lat­est is be­ing sold on­ly at full re­tail price, with­out sub­si­dies that come with two-year con­tract agree­ments.

It is on sale in Google's on­line Play store start­ing at US$349, un­der­cut­ting many ri­val phones at con­tract-free prices. The phone will work on most US wire­less net­works, but not Ver­i­zon's. A Nexus 5 mod­el al­so is avail­able for Eu­ro­pean mar­kets.The Nexus 5 and Kit Kat soft­ware un­der­score Google's am­bi­tion to in­grain its search en­gine and vir­tu­al as­sis­tant, Google Now, even deep­er in­to peo­ple's lives.

In the process, Google Inc hopes to gath­er more in­sights that will en­able it to sell more ad­ver­tis­ing, which gen­er­ates most of its rev­enue.

AP