It’s Pixel leak season, so we lead this story with an apology for being the first of many likely stories you’ll read on Ausdroid about the Pixel 4 this week — but, what if I told you this story might be about the Pixel 4a?
Over the weekend, 9 to 5 Google uncovered code in the leaked Google Camera 7.0 app that very clearly links three device codenames together as “Pixel 2019” – Coral, Flame and Needlefish.
Coral and Flame are known to be the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL (you may have heard of them), but Needlefish is something of a mystery, originally turning up earlier in the year.
The Pixel 3a, a lower-cost Pixel phone with mostly the same world-beating camera, launched earlier this year but it’s rumoured it was originally meant to launch alongside the Pixel 3 in 2018. Given the success of that device, perhaps Google’s looking to get ahead of things in 2019 and launch the Pixel 4a alongside the “main” devices as a more coherent family.
9 to 5‘s evidence is pretty compelling – it’s got a Qualcomm processor, a camera, it’s running Android, it’s consisted a Pixel by Google developers, and it’s been listed as an upcoming device.
What are the alternatives, then?
Needlefish could be some other device – a tablet (seems unlikely), a Chromebook (also unlikely), a smart display (nope, just launched one), or you could go the other way – it could be a super high end Pixel. Could last year’s white whale, the Pixel Ultra, be back? We hope not.
There’s more to read about this over at 9 to 5 Google. Take a look at the evidence and see what you think.
Update, 11.45am Turns out, Geekbench might hold the answer, with the sudden appearance today of a Google Pixel 4 XL 5G model.
Hello, Needlefish?
