Rumour has it that Google will be producing their own smartphone and it will supposedly come out sometime this year. This new smartphone won’t be part of the Nexus line but will instead feature Google’s own branding and probably the search engine giant’s own hardware as well.
This is good news for the Android platform because, for the first time, Google will be fully involved in creating a smartphone from scratch that’s designed to fulfil the company’s vision of what an Android smartphone is supposed to be.
In other words, Google is tired of everyone else getting it wrong. But, before you pop the champagne in celebration, here are three things you might want to keep in mind.
It won’t be cheap
According to 9to5Google, their sources say that Google was “annoyed” with the iPhone being the only “premium” offering in the market. Now in the Nexus’ defence, the new 6P is a pretty premium device. It’s got a nice metal body with grippy chamfered edges and a beautiful 5.7-inch QHD panel.
But, the keyword here is “pretty”. I honestly don’t think the metal finish on the 6P is the best there is out there. Certainly not as nice as something like the HTC One A9 or an iPhone 6/6s/SE.
Perhaps Google’s taken notice of this too and is taking matters into their own hands. Of course, this will likely come with an equally premium price tag so it won’t compete with HTC’s Nexus devices set to come out later this year. The only question is, will it be iPhone-premium or just normal premium.
It’s going to be the ultimate Android experience
Nexus smartphones have given us the purest Android experience. The barebones stock vanilla version of our favourite operating system. But, as we’ve discovered, vanilla may not be the best experience for everyone.
One thing that makes the iPhone and iOS so enjoyable to use (or so people tell me) is that it is stock enough to feel clean, but has enough creature comforts to make it appealing for everyone. Stock Android is just stock and while that’s great for people like us, but it’ll be a big turn-off for the less tech savvy.
This Google-branded smartphone, on the other hand, will probably not be stock. It should still be free of bloatware, but Google will likely bake more useful features into their smartphone. It will be Android’s version of the iPhone, and that’s pretty exciting.
It will probably be very Google-y
Google has got some interesting ideas up their sleeves. From Google Glass to Project Ara, the search engine giant has a whole host of interesting products/features (which until this point can be argued to be nothing more than vapourware) that the company could draw inspiration from and incorporate into their own smartphone.
How well this would actually end up working, remains to be seen but I’m fairly confident that this new Google phone would have something cool up its sleeve. But that’s not all.
What I’m really looking forward to is how Google plans to solve common smartphone problems like battery life in their own Google way. That’s again assuming they plan to solve it at all.
At the end of the day…
This is just speculation based on rumours. Even if Google comes out and makes it official via some announcement, there’s no guarantee that there will be a commercial unit that we can buy. Just look at Google Glass or Project Ara.
These are just what I think we could see with Google’s so-called new smartphone. It could all be true or all be false so feel free to disagree and form your own opinions. Let me know what you think of Google’s own smartphone in the comments below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
