Android Mascots At The Google I/O Developers Conference
Android mascots are lined up in the demonstration area at the Google I/O Developers Conference in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, May 10, 2011. Reuters/Beck Diefenbach

Rumours have started to emerge that the next Nexus smartphone, replacing the months-old Nexus 6, will originate from Asia. Coming from China, it will reportedly sport the Huawei brand but HTC of Taiwan appears to remain a solid contender.

Unconfirmed reports, mostly fuelled by chatters coming from China’s micro-blogging site Weibo, are saying that for the 2015 version of Nexus smartphone Google is shifting its focus to China. Not only that the priority market is sprawling nation but the next Nexus maker will be from China. So Huawei, one of the country’s biggest mobile companies, was shortlisted as a logical choice.

Nexus the Huawei way

Not surprisingly, Android fans wasted no time in visualising the next Nexus phone with Huawei in charge of the coveted Google project. Per the latest work of Deviantart user r4yNTv, via Concept Phones, the Nexus 6 replacement is actually a step back – to be called oddly the Huawei Nexus 5 2015 (image and detailed specs are viewable here).

The Huawei Nexus is imagined as a near-phablet device but not as big as the 5.9-inch Nexus 6. The upcoming edition has a 5.2-inch OLED screen with its screen pixels rendered in Full HD. Majority of the specs are definitely 2015 standards – a 13-megapixel (MP) main shooter and the selfie-friendly front camera at 8MP.

It is a powerhouse too on the CPU side as r4yNTv had proposed that Snapdragon 820 will be on board come the unboxing moment. The Snapdragon 810 follow up, Concept Phones said, should be ready for mass availability by the latter part of 2015, which around the same time that the Nexus 5 2015 would reveal itself.

The application processor is paired with 4GB of RAM in LPDDR4, which the latest memory chip technology unveiled recently by Samsung and will debut soon with the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. Then the rest of the features will surely make Huawei instantly popular in the Android sphere – a slim build at 7.6mm, an easy-grip plastic matte casing, a monstrous 6000mAh battery that can be replaced with the back cover ready to peel off and superfast Internet access through the LTE-Advanced chip.

The whole package will cause a cash setback of $500, r4yNTv said. Indeed not on the cheap side but relatively more affordable than the Motorola-made Nexus 6.

Nexus 9 by HTC

For HTC, the upcoming Nexus smartphone is reduced to a 5-inch screen profile as conceptualised by Hasan Kaymak (the spread of images and short clip are available here). But even on a shrunk render, the HTC Nexus 9 (not to be confused with the tablet Nexus 9 also from HTC), also known as HTC One M9 Google Play Edition, is packed with the mobile superlatives.

The overall build is HTC signature – metallic and unibody but with microSD slot for extra memory to easily slide in. The display is quad HD, powered by a 3720mAh battery, and the RAM provision amounts to 4GB. The balance of the features remains true to the HTC brand – like the front-facing BoomSound speakers and the 20MP rear camera that the company has introduced with the HTC One M9, bumping off the ultra-pixel cams of the M7 and M8 in the process.

Sticker price on this HTC Nexus was not provided by Kaymak but for certain it will be on the top-dollar category. Both the Huawei Nexus 5 2015 and the HTC Nexus 9 are expected to showcase the latest Android version, to gradually push Android Lollipop into extinction, on release date, pegged to happen between October and November 2015.

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