Google detailed its hardware ambitions for the first time, in the form of its own-brand Pixel smartphone lineup and Google Home, earlier in October last year. It is now expected to unveil brand new Pixel devices later this year, but as previous reports suggested it will release three smartphones — that’s no longer the case.
Fresh reports have surfaced on the interwebs and they suggest that the search giant has canceled the Pixel XL successor, which had been codenamed, Muskie. It will now release only two new smartphones, codenamed Walleye and Taimen, where the former will be the Pixel successor while the latter will sport a screen larger than the Pixel XL. Presently, all we know are the codenames and cannot confirm the true identity of the any of the upcoming devices.
Android Police reports that Pixel XL 2, which counted the previous Pixel XL device as its predecessor, was supposed to launch later this year. But, sources privy to the development have told the publication that the said device has been shelved and Taimen with its screen larger than the existing 5.5-inch Pixel XL will replace the same.
In addition to speculations about the said two devices, we’ve also come across reports that the new Pixel XL successor (Taimen) will be manufactured by LG. Instead of picking its Pixel partner, HTC, Google seems to be going ahead with its Nexus hardware partner, whose mention has been found in a bug entry in Android Issue Tracker by 9to5Google. The said entry, which talks about a USB PD Compliance Failure, reads:
Android > Partner > External > LGE > Taimen > power
This suggests that LG Electronics surely has some involvement with the manufacturing process of the Taimen but nothing can be confirmed at this instant and should be taken with a grain of salt. HTC is still said to be working on the original Pixel smartphone successor, which will still bring along upgrades in the same design aesthetics.
As for the specifications, the larger Pixel device has already been spotted on benchmarking website Geekbench. It is now expected to sport a 5.6-inch QuadHD edge-to-edge display. Powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest, Snapdragon 835 chipset clocked at 2.35 GHz, coupled with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of onboard storage. It will also include a 12-megapixel rear shooter and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. It will run Android O, still named but we’re gunning for Orea, out of the box.
