The Google Pixel 2 is expected to be released in Q4 2017 and while we know that the phone will come preinstalled with Android O out of the box, the details on the hardware aspects remain unknown.
Last year, the high-end processor that featured on many flagship phones released in H1 was the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, however, the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, both released in H2 2016, came with the newer and slightly more powerful Snapdragon 821 chipset.
According to the latest developments, it appears that this year’s Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL will take the same direction by coming in with a revised Snapdragon 836 as opposed to the current Snapdragon 835 that is already powering a host of high-end phones.
Prior to this development, it was claimed that the Snapdragon 836 would make its debut with the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 8, but it appears that this won’t be the case, especially with many reports pointing towards the same Snapdragon 835 SoC with respect to the Note 8.
Similar to the Snapdragon 820 versus Snapdragon 821 case, the new Snapdragon 836 will reportedly stick to using the same GPU as the Snapdragon 835. The same CPU combination will also be retained, but as expected, this revised version will come with higher clock speeds, which will translate to enhanced performance compared to the SD835.
This is not coming from Google or even Qualcomm, which means it’s important to be a little skeptical about the report. But given what happened in 2016, we won’t be surprised if this Google Pixel 2 rumor eventually materializes.
As noted, the Pixel 2 should be announced somewhere in Q4 2017, probably in October, just like the 2016 Pixels.