This is without a doubt, the best deals on a smartphone today. For the same price from most carriers for most higher end phones under contract, you can buy the Google Nexus 4 from Google. The Nexus 4 was a great deal before,but now that Google has dropped the price of both the 16GB and 8GB versions to just $199 and $249 this is for sure one of the best deals on a smartphone in 2013.

There’s rumors of  a Google Nexus 5 coming in the next few months, but this could just be due to the fact that Google can take a loss on the phone and make up the price in the services sold such as the Google Play Music service annouced earlier this summer.

Whatever the reason, it’s really hard to beat this price, and for those that don’t make a lot of calls, it’s easy to activate the Nexus 4 on T-Mobile or AT&T and you’ve got a cheap contract-free phone that runs stock Android for a skinless and easy to use interface without any bloatware.

The one disadvantage of the Nexus 4 is that the phone is not LTE compatible but HSPA+ is fast enough and service areas are growing.

The Nexus 4 is a very sleek design with glass front and backs, 4.7 inch display, fast Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor  and an 8MP digital camera.

The Nexus 4 is getting a little old with a release date of 2012, and the Samsung S4, HTC One and Moto  X could offer faster speeds, more features and bigger screens but you’ll pay 3x the price for off contract versions of these phones at prices in the $600 range. At $199, the 8GB Nexus 4 costs one third of the price of 2013 feature phones.

If you need a cheap phone that competes with the best selling phones of 2013 the Nexus 4 is the best deal on a phone off contract today.

Buy the Google Nexus 4 now while you can.