Earlier this year, reports claimed that HTC is working on two new Nexus devices for 2016. Since then, many folks have expected an all-HTC announcement when Google intros its new Nexus hardware later this year, but now Huawei has thrown a wrench into the whole thing.
Charlene Munilall, the general manager of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group in South Africa, claims that Huawei is prepping a new Nexus device for this year. “We’re doing the Nexus again this year, by the way,” Munilall said in an interview with Gearburn. She was discussing why there wasn’t an official Nexus 6P launch in South Africa and said that Nexus products are “very niche.”
Huawei teamed up with Google last year for the Nexus 6P, the company’s first Nexus product. The 6P has been generally well-received, offering solid specs and perhaps the best build quality of any Nexus device yet. Given that, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Huawei create another Nexus with Google at some point, but most people haven’t been expecting that to be this year.
Neither Google nor Huawei have offered any comment on Munilall’s statement, so right now things are kind of up in the air. If Huawei is indeed “doing the Nexus” again in 2016, there are a couple of possibilities about what it could be making. For example, we could see two HTC phones and a Huawei tablet. Given how much praise the 6P has gotten, it could also be that Huawei is simply prepping a 6P with newer hardware.
Would you like to see a new Nexus device from Huawei in 2016?