Google’s Android Boss Teases Nexus 6 for Late 2014
Even though Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has wrapped up, we’re still getting news bits here and there about the future of the mobile community. Case in point, French Android blog Frandroid has posted an interview with Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of Android and Chrome, who offered up a hint about the company’s next flagship smartphone.
According to the interview (translated by, what else, Chrome’s translation software), Pichai said that the Nexus 6 should be coming out sometime in the latter half of 2014. “I can assure you it will not be released in the first half of the year,” he’s quoted as saying. That would seem to confirm that Google plans on continuing with the Nexus line, putting the final nail in the coffin for a set of predictions made by Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin.
If you’ll recall, last month, in the wake of Google and Samsung entering into a cross-licensing deal, Murtazin said that Google would get out of the hardware game, it would end its Motorola-made Moto line, and that the Android-powered Nokia X smartphone would get killed by the agreement. Now we know that Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, so it has nothing to do with the Moto line anymore, while the Nokia X is already on sale in territories all over the world.
While Pichai’s statement leaves room for interpretation (like, the Nexus 6 won’t come out in either half of 2014), it would seem that Google doesn’t plan on abandoning its smartphone line. In fact, now that the Moto X is officially Lenovo’s, Google has an even greater incentive to keep investing in its own proprietary hardware to show off everything the Android OS can do.
It’ll be interesting to see what Google crams into the Nexus 6 whenever they decide to pull back the curtain. As of now, the Nexus 5 has gotten great reviews for its solid performance and modest price tag compared with handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the iPhone 5s. Now that Samsung has announced its Galaxy S5, the pressure’s on to offer an affordable alternative that can still compete in the hardware department.