As we steadily approach the mid-year, rumors are starting to circulate about the next Google Pixel phone, presumably the ‘Pixel 5a’. Here’s what we learned about Google’s next phone from the Android 12 Preview builds.
Android’s Developer Preview and Beta versions have long been a source of information on what’s to come for Google’s Pixel phones, from upcoming models to features of the next quarterly Pixel Feature Drop. As you’d expect, the Android 12 Developer Preview builds were no different, offering quite a few new details, including some tidbits about the next Pixel phones, like the Pixel 5a.
Here we’ve rounded up some of the smaller bits of news about the next Pixel phone as discovered through the Android 12 Developer Preview, and we’ll be keeping this space up to date as more details come to light.
Google “Pixel 5a”
The biggest news from the Android 12 Developer Preview period is immediately that Google’s next mid-year phone is indeed called the “Pixel 5a”. The information comes from the well-known Google Camera modder and member of the Android community cstark27 (H / T Mishaal Rahman) and verified by our own Dylan Roussel.
Pixel 5a: GR0M2
Pixel 4a (5G): G025I
Pixel 5: GTT9Q8
The nickname “Pixel 5a” has been long guessed and even mentioned in the Android Open Source Project almost a year ago. This new mention of the name in the Android 12 Developer Preview gives us renewed confidence in Google’s branding of their next Pixel device.
Model number
In addition to confirming the ‘Pixel 5a’ name, the same source provides a model number for the device, ‘GR0M2’. As far as we can determine, this will be the ‘international’ model number for the Pixel 5a – not the number we’ll see on boxes in the United States – as it appears alongside two other international model numbers.
As a side note to this model number, not directly related to Android 12, it has been discovered by Mukul Sharma that this GR0M2 model number of the Pixel 5a has recently passed through the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), a regulatory body similar to the FCC in the US. This approval takes the Pixel 5a one step closer to release. In comparison, the Pixel 4a received BIS approval about two months before arriving in the US and four months before launching in India.
Code name
While the leaked internal document we reported on last year referred to the Pixel 5a codenamed ‘Barbette’, our Dylan Roussel discovered in the first Android 12 Developer Preview build that the correct code name is ‘Barbet’. Notably, unlike “barbette”, “barbet” is a type of fish that better fits the theme of Pixel codenames.
This corrected code name ‘barbet’ for the Pixel 5a has since been confirmed by our APK Insight team’s investigation into version 8.2 of the Google Camera app.
Dylan Roussel contributed to this article
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