People at Google love huge phones or rather phablets. With each of its previous releases before the Google Nexus 6P, the search engine giant always released a phone with a bigger screen than its predecessor.
We saw it happen with the Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 6, but things changed with the Nexus 6P and to worse with the new Google Pixel phones. Where the latest Pixel XL has a 5.5-inch screen, the Nexus 6P has a 5.7-inch panel while the Nexus 6 has a larger 5.96-inch screen. If the latest reports are to be believed, we could see a change to the upcoming Google Pixel 2 where the tech giant will go back to its previous trend of increasing the screen size on the flagship.
Earlier this week, it emerged that the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are being worked on under code names Muskie and Walleye. A few days later, Droid Life also reported that the company could be working on a third Pixel device codenamed Taimen, but the details about this phone remain unclear.
From the names, we can see that Google’s obsession with fish is not about to come to an end anytime soon. However, another interesting thing to note that the choice of the name of the fish has always had something to do with the dimensions of the devices. The 4.7-inch Nexus 4 was codenamed Mako while the following 5-inch Nexus 5 received the codename Hammerhead. The 2014 Nexus 6 was codenamed Shamu while the 2015 5.2-inch Nexus 5X and 5.7-inch Nexus 6P were codenamed Bullhead and Anger. In 2016, Google went for Sailfish and Marlin as far as the Pixel and Pixel XL are concerned, respectively.
Just so as to bring you closer, the latest names should also have something to with the final dimensions of the Google Pixel 2 phones. Where the 17kg-weighing Muskie is significantly larger than the 11kg-weighing Walleye, none of these two are close to the 100kg-weighing Taimen, which suggests that this phone will indeed be huge.
This is not strange at all, especially at a time when Samsung Galaxy S8 is shifting from the traditional 5.1-inch screen size to a larger 5.8-inch panel and LG just released a 5.7-inch G6 to succeed the 5.3-inch G5. So far, we can’t really tell what this Google Pixel 2 device really is, exactly, but the stage seems to be already set for a Pixel XXL phablet that will possibly compete with the 6.2-inch Samsung Galaxy S8+.
Another possibility is that Google could be looking for a way to get back into the tablet market, especially since it has been a while since the company introduced a new tablet. The last time this happened was back in 2015 with the Pixel C, which could also mean it’s about time the company released one.
Despite the uncertainties surrounding the mystery Google Pixel 2 device, previous codenames do suggest that the device will indeed be big – bigger than the 5.5-inch Google Pixel XL.