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Unauthorized photographs of Google’s rumored Pixel smartphones were accidentally posted on the website of Canadian communications company Bell before the official Oct. 4 unveiling of the phones by Google, but the information was later removed from the site.
The errant images were posted Oct. 2 on Twitter by Steve Hemmerstoffer, who frequently posts leaked information about new devices.
“Introducing #PixelXL, Phone by #Google. Order yours today,” wrote Hemmerstoffer. The included link, http://www.bell.ca/business/form/SNote7PreOrder …, is no longer functioning due to being removed once the mistaken early post was discovered.
The rumored Google Pixel smartphones, which have been rumored for months, are expected to be unveiled at the secretive Oct. 4 Google event, which was announced in late September, according to an earlier eWEEK story. Also expected to be unveiled is Google’s rumored Daydream VR headset and an improved Chromecast streaming video dongle. Google previously released a video teaser that shows an animated outline of a smartphone along with an Oct. 4 event date notice, in advance of the announcements.
The Oct. 4 event will be held in San Francisco but is also being live-streamed on YouTube.com/Google.
The two Android smartphone models, which are reportedly called the Google Pixel and Pixel XL phones, have been designed by Google rather than third-party suppliers, but are built by HTC, according to earlier reports.
The Google smartphones have been rumored since May, according to an earlier eWEEK story. By directly designing the devices, Google could have more control and oversight of its hugely popular Android mobile operating system, which could help it take on Apple more directly in the smartphone wars, the story reported. The two upcoming devices were apparently code-named Marlin (M1) and Sailfish (S1) as they went through the development process, according to earlier reports.
Google has offered Android handsets in the past through arrangements with manufacturers such as HTC, Huawei and others, but those handsets were designed by those companies and carried Google Nexus nameplates, without Google’s own designs. Google has not previously designed and built its own phones.
Earlier in September, a rumor from a well-known IT tipster circulated about Google’s potential plans for a 7-inch tablet computer that will be built by Huawei and offered for sale by the end of 2016. That device is rumored to be a Huawei-built 7-inch tablet with 4GB RAM, according to the tipster’s report. The rumored machine could also be announced by Google at the Oct. 4 event.
Also in September, Google suspended one of its other recent smartphone initiatives, its Project Ara smartphone effort, which began in 2013 with the concept of designing a phone platform that would incorporate a wide array of camera, audio and other modules as desired by users. Project Ara was ended as part of an effort to streamline the company’s hardware efforts, even after its progress was touted at Google’s I/O developer conference earlier this year. The Ara phones centered on a baseplate or frame that incorporated a display, CPU, graphics processing unit, sensors and all the functionality of a standard smartphone.
Google was scheduled to release a preview version of Ara this fall in a bid to spur developer interest in the technology and ensure that modules for a wide range of applications would be available for the smartphone at launch. Organizations that were working with Google in developing modules for Ara included Samsung and Sony. Among the modules that Google was working on was one that would integrate the functions of a glucometer so people with diabetes could measure their glucose levels using their smartphones.