Google is having quite the week, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way for a company who might want to keep its upcoming products a secret. After seeing their new Nest Home speaker outed fully, we now know the names of all three of their phones for this year: Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a (5G), and Pixel 5.
After taking a look at code inside the latest Google App beta, 9to5Google found evidence to suggest that Google is done hiding anything. Rather than only referring to upcoming phones by their codenames (sunfish, redfin, and bramble), Google has instead listed both internal names and the official names for each alongside previous Pixel phones. This is awkward.
In case you missed previous coverage on the codename situation, Google has all but confirmed that sunfish is Pixel 4a, redfin is Pixel 4a (5G), and bramble is Pixel 5. Soooooo, yeah, if they ever release the Pixel 4a, we could then see a 5G version of the same 4a, plus a Pixel 5.
But wait, aren’t the redfin and bramble phones supposedly running the same Snapdragon 765G 5G chipset and that’s why we initially thought they would be Pixel 5 and Pixel 5 XL? Yes! Assuming these names aren’t sneaky bait from Google, we could take this to mean that we’ll get a 5G version of the Pixel 4a and a Pixel 5, with Google tweaking materials or other features to try and differentiate.
For example, the Pixel 4a 5G could be a plastic phone with a lesser camera setup and no wireless charging, while the Pixel 5 could be glass and metal, have the premium camera experience, wireless charging, a better display, and who knows what else. The chipset matters for performance and connectivity, but there are plenty of ways for Google to make two phones running the same chip very different.
To recap, there’s still a Pixel 4a out there that you can read all about here. In addition to that phone, which could still cost just $349, we now might see a Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 later this year.
Does this help explain those weird Pixel 5 CAD renders from earlier this week?
// 9to5Google
This post was last modified on July 10, 2020 9:50 am