In the past years Google has shared around the manufacturing of the Nexus devices with nearly all major OEMs. Now with Chinese manufacturers starting to release decent high end Android phones 2015 could be the year that Google teams with a Chinese manufacturer for one of its Nexus devices.
Yesterday Gizmochina posted a rumour from a Weibo source that Google was to partner with a Chinese OEM for a Nexus device in 2015. Today the source has provided more information saying that one Nexus device in 2015 will be made by LG and the other by a Chinese manufacturer. Which company was making the phone and which the tablet is unknown at this stage, with neither LG, nor any Chinese manufacturers having much success in the tablet sector of the market so far.
With LG seeming to specialise in making high-end phones in the past couple of years that could leave the door open for the Chinese manufacturer to reach out to the Western markets with a Nexus tablet, possibly and hopefully of the 7 inch variety. Google have previously said they look to the OEM building the most exciting hardware at the time to choose the next manufacturer in the Nexus program and this could tie-in with Huawei’s Ascend Mate 7 which featured quite a decent finger print sensor, which Google is known to be interested in, after code and the physical sensor for biometric security was removed from Android source code for the Nexus 6.
Another piece of the puzzle that lends the rumour of the Chinese manufacturer being Huawei is that the leak also said that the chip in the Nexus device is unknown at this stage, not knowing whether a Qualcomm Snapdragon will be used or an inhouse processor of the Chinese OEM. Huawei are the only Chinese manufacturer of note that makes their own processor inhouse, the Hisilcon Kirin processor. Using this processor may not be a bad thing as Huawei could optimise the software easily themselves for the hardware as they would know it best.
While the link and the rumour are fairly tenous at best it is interesting to see Nexus rumours so early in the year. Whether this rumour turns out to be true we’ll obviously have to wait and see but I am excited to see what the Chinese manufacturers can do. I am thinking they will want to make a big splash with their first big foray into the western markets.
Anyone else like this idea of involving a Chinese manufacturer in the Nexus program? How about another LG Nexus device?
