Go Fish: Are “Molly” and “Flounder” Codenames for Nexus 6 & 8?

Last week, enterprising code-analyzers found evidence of what might be Google’s next Nexus tablet, discovering code for something called “Flounder” in the Chromium issue tracker (quick reminder: Google codenames its Nexus products after fish). Shortly after that, evidence surfaced that Flounder might indeed be the long-rumored tablet being made by HTC, while another piece of code featuring the codename “Molly” might be yet another Nexus device. Today, even more evidence seems to have arisen that points specifically to a Nexus 6 and Nexus 8 as coming soon from Google.

A post on German tech site SmartDroid (via BGR) has posted screenshots of more code scoured from Chromium’s Code Review, which is an official repository for tests and data regarding Chrome usage. Take a look:

As you can see, we’ve got the Nexus 6 and Nexus 8 named point blank. Naturally, this could all be bogus, since screenshots of text aren’t particularly hard to fake at all. But then the question arises of “why bother,” and we’re right back to seeing these screens as evidence of new Nexus devices after all.

The reason that the new Nexus’s existence is questionable is because of all the conflicting reports that have been coming out for the last few months. Google’s Sundar Pichai, the company’s head of Android, teased that there’d be a new Nexus this year back at MWC in February. Then the Verge reported that Google was simply going to be killing the Nexus line of handsets in short order.

So what’s the truth? Chances seem good that we’ll get at least one more Nexus handset before the end of the year, and some other tablet to show off the newest builds of Android. But with Project Ara on the way, it’s possible that these could, indeed, be the last handsets coming from Google itself. We’ll probably know once and for all at Google’s upcoming I/O conference this summer. Stay tuned.

[Source: SmartDroid via BGR]