Earlier this year many blogs were reporting that the Nexus program is dead and that Android Silver will be taking it’s place. Here at Ausdroid we have taken the different view that the Google Play Edition program will be replaced by Android Silver and that the Nexus program will live on. Afterall, app and Google developers (the guys and girls who work on Android for Google themselves) need a reference device to test their work on. With this in mind we have been waiting with bated breath for some leak or rumour to give us more confidence in our theory. Six weeks ago the head of Android engineering Dave Burke reinforced our opinion by stating:
When Google’s engineers write the open source code for new versions of Android, another team is also designing a Nexus device designed to take best advantage of Android’s new features. The two development processes go hand-in-hand, and that’s not going to change any time soon.
When we are working, there are sort of two outputs. We’re building a Nexus device and we’re building the open source code. There is no way you can build the open source code without the phone or tablet or whatever you are building. You have to live and breathe the code you are developing.
You can’t build a platform in the abstract, you have to build a device (or devices). So, I don’t think can can or will ever go away. And then, I think Nexus is also interesting in that it is a way of us explaining how we think Android should run. It is a statement, almost a statement of purity in some respects. I don’t see why we would ever turn away from that, it wouldn’t make sense.
Over at the benchmark site, Antutu, an image for the results for an unknown product showed up lending more weight to the presence of a Nexus phone in development. Said product is codenamed “Google Shamu” with the manufacturer not listed. The listed specs of the device are very impressive including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, 3GB RAM, and a 5.2in QHD display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440pixels. With Nexus phones getting bigger each year this may be the year for a Nexus phablet, although the 5.2in screen possibly sits somewhere between a phone and a phablet.
If this device is indeed the rumoured Motorola-made sixth Google Nexus phone then it appears to be much more highly specced than any other Motorola device we have seen recently. With this being the first Motorola-made Nexus device it seems appropriate that they put the best hardware they can into it being formerly Google-owned.
Does this look like the Nexus device for you to spend your hard-earned on? Are you ready for a Nexus Phablet?
