Just yesterday, Google started teasing the mid-range Pixel 4a along with a date of August 3. Today, however, we have our first look at the mid-range Pixel phone for 2021: the “Pixel 5a” in the Android Open Source Project.
Earlier this month, we’re pretty sure we know about all three Google Pixel phones by 2020, namely the mid-range Pixel 4a, the upper mid-range (5G) Pixel 4a, and the premium Pixel 5. Our Stephen Hall has already explained what to expect from these three phones in great detail.
With those mysteries more or less solved, our focus has already turned to the Made by Google phones of 2021. With the success of the Pixel 3a and the amount of excitement around the long overdue Pixel 4a, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google continue to offer phones mid-range for the foreseeable future.
Today, however, we have concrete evidence that Google is working on a mid-range phone in 2021 called “Pixel 5a.” This comes from a code change in the Android Open Source Project, where a developer makes direct mentions to the full line of Google Pixel phones and to what version of Android it has launched or will launch.
As our Dylan Roussel discovered, in the list of devices, we see the next three Pixel phones we already knew about: the Pixel 4a, 4a (5G) and Pixel 5, as well as a direct mention of a Pixel “5a.”
So what do we learn from this initial mention? First of all, we now know that Google Pixel 5a is under development. Second, we can assume that just like the Pixel 3a and 4a, the Pixel 5a will launch in the middle of the year, as it will be on Android 11 (R) instead of Android 12 next fall.
What we don’t know is what type of hardware this Pixel 5a would work on. That kind of information generally doesn’t appear in the Android Open Source Project until after a device has been released. Either way, it’s exciting to have confirmation that Google will continue to launch quality mid-range phones for the foreseeable future.
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