Google Pixel XL 2 (Taimen) To Be Made By LG, Says Report

Google is reportedly planning to launch two new Pixel smartphones this year, codenamed Walley and Taimen. The search giant was initially rumored to be working on three Pixel phones but has skipped one of them that were codenamed, Muskie. However, a new report hints that LG will be manufacturing the Pixel phones this year and not HTC like last year.

To recall, last year's Pixel phones were manufactured by HTC. Previous reports mentioned that HTC may make this year's Pixel phones as well. 9to5Google in its latest report says that LG Electronics is confirmed to manufacture a device called Taimen aka Google Pixel XL 2.

The report says that after digging into the Android Issue Tracker, a bug entry by an LG employee back in the month of March reveals not only confirms the making of Taimen but also hints that LG is manufacturing the upcoming Google Pixel XL 2. The LG employee has entered "USB PD Compliance Failure" as a bug entry, to which a Google user asked the LG to close this previously "discussed" bug and move under a category and mentioned: "Android > Partner > External > LGE > Taimen > power," as noted by India Today.

However, it is also likely that Google might be considering LG as its manufacturing partner for a third device other than the Pixel and Pixel XL successors. Earlier reports have suggested that several smartphone vendors, including HTC, LG, Coolpad, and TCL, were competing win the contract for manufacturing 2017 Google Pixel phones. With the new report coming in, looks like LG won the race this year.

In one of the recent leak, the Google Pixel device codenamed 'Taimen' was spotted on a benchmarking website with underwhelming specifications. On GeekBench, the device is listed with a single-core test score of 1,804 and multi-core score of 6,248. According to the listing, the Google Pixel XL 2 could be equipped with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 835 SoC paired with 4GB of RAM.