Rumours of a mid-range Pixel device have been circulating for some time, and a new look at the latest AR Core app from Google has led to the discovery of two new Google branded device code names.
The codenames – Bonito and Sargo – were discovered by Android Police in a teardown of the latest version of the AR Core app. The names are in line with previous Google device codenames which have have historically been based on fish. According to Wikipedia, Sargo is the name for a white seabream and Bonito is described as ‘a tribe of medium-sized, ray-finned predatory fish in the family Scombridae’.
The Bonito codename has been around for a while, though it was suspected cancelled when Blueline and Crosshatch emerged as the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL.
Roland Quandt of WinFuture.de has made mention of the Bonito device – which is rumoured to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor – at least three times now, with the latest a link to a mention of Bonito in the Android Source repository:
It's happeniiiiiing (Google "Bonito" w/ SDM710) https://t.co/VWDZiB3US7
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) October 20, 2018
Initial reports of a mid-range Pixel have been aimed at the Indian market, a market which Google has been keen to crack and making some headway with Android One and Android Go devices but a more premium offering may also be a good fit for the market.
With Google having just announced their 2018 hardware line-up it’d be a stretch to see new devices being announced imminently. A possible longer term announcement may be possible, but at this stage all we have is some codenames and if they’re real we’ll likely be hearing more about them soon.
I’m gonna go for the long game here and predict that these are the codenames for the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL.
I wonder if Google can release a mid-range SD710 Pixel to India by start of Feb. I will be in India in Feb and wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one. The full-blown Pixels are now out of my price range.
Please be a mid range device, even if I have to order it from India.