Until now, it had been assumed that HTC, will be making the second generation of the Google’s Pixel phones, as it had made Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL smartphones last year. However, a fresh leak has made us unsure about this; this leak claims that LG will be making the next model of Pixel XL; Google Pixel XL 2 (Plot Twist!)
9To5Google dug through the Android Issue Tracker and discovered that an LG employee had made a bug entry, and logged an issue, this was followed by a Google employee asking him to move the bug entry into a section called ‘Tiamen’; which is the codename of the device. This was found to be a subsection in LG Electronics and is speculated to be linked to the making of the Pixel smartphones. Earlier, ‘Tiamen’ was speculated to be of the three smartphones in the second-generation of Pixel which will be launched later this year. A recent report has suggested that a Pixel device codenamed ‘Muskie’ has been shelved and Tiamen will be the direct successor of the Pixel XL.
To add to the solidity of the claims made by this new leak, Android Police editor, David Ruddock’s sources separately confirmed that LG would be the manufacturer of Tiamen.
The main question that arising in your (as well as my) mind is that why would Google switch from HTC to LG? 9To5Google points out that the reason might be that earlier this year, Google had been speculated to have shown interest in investing in LG’s flexible OLED displays for its next smartphone. Or, on the other hand, Google might not have been satisfied with HTC’s manufacturing capacity, as both Pixel and Pixel XL faced severe delays in shipping. This was to the extent that the 128GB Pixel wasn’t in stock for about two months. At that time, Google covered it up by saying that the demand had “exceeded (its) expectations.”
This information makes it very likely that we might eventually get two different designs on the Pixel and Pixel XL 2, which resembles the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P situation that happened earlier. Before the surfacing of the leak, it was reported that LG was among the companies who tried getting the contract for Google’s Pixel 3. HTC, TCL, and Coolpad were other companies that were supposedly interested in bagging this contract.
For now, that’s all the information we’ve got. Hopefully, there’ll be more developments coming soon.