Google X Phone Render
A new set of rumors on the Google X Phone has hit the web, revealing other details for the handset although they still remain unconfirmed for now.
Before we look at today’s crazy-but-interesting X Phone rumor du jour, we’ll remind you to take the information with the appropriate amount of skepticism, as we’re yet to see an official Google X Phone announcement.
That said, we’ll also remind you that high-ranking Google execs including Eric Schmidt and Larry Page appeared to be quite excited when talking about handsets set to come in the future from Motorola, so it would make plenty of sense for this X Phone device to be one of them.
Android and Me received a bunch of new tips on the upcoming X Phone, from a trusted source, with today’s report offering up new juicy details.
The launch
The Google X Phone is said to launch in the first week of August, with AT&T getting a three-month exclusivity deal. After that, the phone should hit other carriers in November.
The question is, what will Google receive for allowing AT&T to be the exclusive launch partner in the U.S.? Android and Me speculates that “AT&T might have allowed Google to ship the first “X Phone” as an unlocked device in return for the short exclusivity deal.
International launch details aren’t mentioned at this time, but we’d expect such a phone to be launched in other markets in addition to the U.S. this year.
The “creepy” features
The interesting part about today’s Google X Phone rumor concerns certain features Google may have in mind for this phone.
The handset is said to have an “always on listening mode” that will let the user shout voice commands to it. The publication reminds us that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 comes with an always-on Voice Activation feature, but that’s Qualcomm’s high-end CPU that may not actually be found inside the X Phone – after all, previous rumors did say that the device will be budget friendly, and it won’t necessarily offer high-end features.
Since we’re talking about high-end specs, we’ll remind you that earlier this week, a different report revealed a purported AnTuTu benchmark result for the X Phone running Android 5.0.1 that places it in the mid-range category, by 2013 standards.
More interestingly, the Google X Phone will feature a “predictive intelligence” feature that will be able to recognize your intentions from the moment you pick up your handset. Depending on how you hold it, the phone may know you want to take a picture and launch an appropriate app or that you want to see the time and/or notifications and display them to you when looking at the screen.
Finally, the phone will be “always connected” to the Google Chrome browser, which would make sense considering that the Android and Chrome divisions are now lead by the same person, Sundar Pichai.
The customizations
While there won’t be any hardware customization in this X Phone version, as rumors presented by the same online publication suggested in the past, it looks like users will still be able to customize the color and material of the X Phone’s case.
Customers will be able to choose from plastic, metal, carbon fiber and wood for the case, and select from a variety of colors to produce “thousands of custom combinations.”
Conclusion
No matter how wild, these X Phone rumors are interesting, but they’re still rumors until proven otherwise. We’ll have to wait and see whether the handset gets official at Google I/O, or whether it would be announced later this summer, but whatever the case is, we’re surely going to see more rumors appear.
And yes, we will note that this new X Phone report coincidently hit the web just as the Galaxy S4 is about to be launched, at least in some markets, by some carriers.
