The possibility of a Snapdragon 710 powered mid-range Pixel device seemed to strike a chord when it came up last week, and a new tidbit on it surfaced yesterday with the same source giving it a codename: Bonito.
Bonito, according to Wikipedia, is actually a ‘tribe of medium-sized, ray-finned predatory fish in the family Scombridae’, a fishy codename which perfectly aligns with the previously fishy codenames Google has assigned to Pixel (Sailfish (Pixel); Marlin (Pixel XL)) and Nexus (Hammerhead (Nexus 5)) devices.
The fishy Bonito monniker also aligns with the current Pixel 3/Pixel 3 XL codenames of Blueline, Crosshatch and Albacore, all of which have shown up in AOSP – although Bonito hasn’t….yet.
The name comes from the same source as the original information about a Snapdragon 710 powered ‘Mobile Device’ from Google coming next year: Roland Quandt of WinFuture.de who also tweeted that HMD Global/Nokia is working on a SD710 powered device as well – this one codenamed Phoenix.
HMD/Nokia Mobile is working on a Snapdragon 710 based device to be released in the autumn/winter 2018 timeframe. Codename is "Phoenix". Oh and btw, the Google SDM710 based device apparently is called "Bonito".
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) June 4, 2018
HMD Global has switched to running the essentially stock Android One software on most of their phones earning them comparisons to the Nexus line of devices. A Snapdragon 710 powered device would be most welcome, with the chipset aimed to be included in quite powerful, yet cheaper phones.
We’ve got a larger Pixel launch to come later this year before we see what Google has planned for Bonito next year, but perhaps they’ll let us in on some information on what to expect when they unveil the Pixel 3 phones later this year.
