Google’s 2017 lineup of Pixel phones haven’t been in the news that much lately, with a very small trickle of rumors coming out over the past few months. A new report has some fresh information about the handsets, asserting that all 3 will run on a Snapdragon 835 processor.
This makes sense considering the fact that the SoC is Qualcomm’s flagship offering. A recent article claimed that Samsung and the chipset maker were collaborating on the so-called Snapdragon 845 CPU, but that likely won’t be out until much later. Moreover, the former had gobbled up the initial batch of Snapdragon 835 units, leaving little for the rest.
Google probably won’t face this issue since the new Pixel phones are expected to come out in the second half of the year when supply of the Snapdragon 835 should stabilize. Evidence for the presence of the SoC comes in the form of listings on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) which link the MSM8998 processor to the words Walleye, Muskie and Taimen.
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To recall, Muskie, Walleye and Taimen are said to be the codenames for the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, and a mystery third Pixel device, respectively. Each corresponds to the name of a type of fish, going from smaller to bigger. The last is rumored to be larger than the XL, leading to speculation that it could be a huge phablet or tablet.
Speculation so far has indicated that HTC is going on Pixel duty again this year. Google was supposedly also in talks with LG Display to supply curved OLED screens.