Nexus Getting Rebranded!

More than just a rebranding, such a move from Google will have far-reaching consequences on both, the handset market, as well as Android on the whole.

Google is reportedly moving away from the brand name Nexus that has been associated with their smartphones and tablets, for the last six years.

As per a report by Android Central, the change shall be affective in the two upcoming smartphones that are expected to release in the market this October.

Since the first Nexus phone in January 2010, the company has brought out eight Nexus smartphones. On such devices, the software is backed by Google, and of course the phones are Android, or rather one shall say Stock Android — true to the Android experience in the most original form, without the manufacturer tweaking their wares.

The point to note though, is that Google however does not take care of the manufacturing of such devices; the manufacturing is done in partnership with other smartphone manufacturers, and Huawei, LG, HTC, Samsung, and even Motorola has been on the other side of that deal.

Now, rumours have it that Google is having some upcoming devices manufactured by HTC, but under it’s (Google’s) direct supervision and to their exacting requirements. To differentiate such devices in the marketplace (from other Nexus devices), Google might strip the Nexus brand name from its smartphones, instead replacing it with just a ‘G’, standing for Google, as individual branding for these niche devices.

The move could work quite well for Google, given that it is such a popular brand on its own. But it will also raise some interesting questions as to what direction such a move will force upon the company — since they’ve preserved the Google brand name for the software entity, for years now, separating it from the hardware entity by terming those clearly as Nexus.

If the rebranding does happen, the first two devices to showcase it would be Pixel and Pixel XL, manufactured by HTC. These have so far been known with their codenames, “Marlin” and “Sailfish.” The devices reportedly feature a 5 and 5.5 inch display respectively, which is a slight downsize from the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P.

Given that the market is moving slowly away from hyper-sized phones, the downsizing might be a good idea. As to how the devices will do in the market, their features are still not out in the open for discussion. We shall have to wait for a while longer to speculate more on that.

On the significance of the rebranding, it does not simply have to do with replacing the logo on the back. The shift in the brand name has also got to do with a change in how Google functions altogether. Up to now, as I mentioned earlier, Nexus devices have been shipped with stock version, or ‘vanilla’ versions of the Android OS, without any tweaking whatsoever.
What this means is that these phones are devoid of the special features that third party manufacturers enable in their devices, to enhance user experience.

But with these new devices, Google might be planning to change that, and ship them with a special version of their latest Android Nougat. There isn’t much news on what would be special about this version of Android N, and how it would be tweaked, but we will find out soon enough.

Some critics are of the opinion that this kind of a change was bound to happen, since Google had pretty much been moving away from what their idea of the Nexus had been back in 2009. They kept adding closed-source apps, services and features to the Nexus line, moving away from the initial idea of what “Nexus” really meant. There was going to come a time when they would feel the need to stop, regroup, and rebrand.

We still don’t know for certain if the Nexus brand name is dead or not, especially given the fact that no news has been heard about the tablets that were also a subsidiary of the brand.

If all of this were to prove true, this would be one of the most significant overhauls that the Android world will see, especially given how they are approaching Android Nougat right now.

The company has so far not provided with any confirmations on this news, but it seems to align with what Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, had to say at the Recode Code Conference, back in June: “You’ll see us hopefully add more features on top of Android on Nexus phones. There’s a lot of software innovation to be had”.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.