You Decide: Is This the Huawei Nexus?

Thursday, August 6, 2015

You Decide: Is This the Huawei Nexus?

We’re getting closer to Nexus season, which means purported leaks of upcoming devices are going to surface more often. Take today for example, where we have a new video of a device that the internet wants you to believe is the upcoming Huawei Nexus, aka “angler.” Is it? I don’t think anyone actually knows outside of Huawei and Google, but there are some things worth discussing here.

First, the device has that matte black finish that Google is quite fond of. This is obviously some sort of prototype phone, but even prototypes tend to use materials you would see in final builds. Second, the shape of the camera sensor looks identical to the sensor found on the LG Nexus 5 from a couple of years back. Why on Earth would Huawei use a similar design to an LG phone? Great question! Then again, if this is a Nexus, it’s technically Google’s phone, so it can look however Google wants it to look. Third, the overall shape of the phone, along with the placement of the fingerprint sensor looks a lot like Huawei’s Ascend Mate 7, only with a Googley flair. And with Huawei thought to make a Nexus, well, this could be it, I guess.

So what’s weird about this? The video is ridiculously terrible and low-res (Who shoots video in 240p?), so you can’t make much out in any fine detail. There is a word at the bottom of the phone that is tough to make out, but could be “porsche” or something along those lines. There is also a weird-looking PIN setup near the bottom, where we would expect to see a USB Type-C port. And that’s about all we can make out.

I don’t know if this is a Huawei Nexus. It could be. It also might not be. You decide.