Google is one of the smartphone manufacturers who has not yet cracked the smartphone game even after several years of making and releasing flagship devices. If you think Google started releasing smartphones since the Pixel series, that’s not true because prior to that Google was released Nexus-branded phones. However, it now seems that Google is developing its own chips for Pixel devices and Chromebooks.
The basic idea behind Google’s Nexus or Pixel branded phones has always been to show off the best of the latest version of Android. Therefore, it is also observed that hardware takes a back step on every new Google smartphone. Google has also tried to step up its hardware game with the Pixel series by acquiring HTC last year and taking most of their employees to make them work on the Pixel 4 series.
But we see that the strategy from Google has not worked well because the Pixel 4 sales are not anywhere near expectations. It is said that the device sold even less than the Pixel 3 series from 2019.
Keeping those things aside, a new report from Axios has emerged which says that Google is indeed working on its own processor. This means that Google will follow the path set by Apple in making their phones powered by its own processor. Having said that, we know this is a really tough job and Samsung would know much about it thanks to their Exynos processors.
The report mentions that these processors will be made for both their Pixel phones as well as their ChromeOS-powered Chromebooks. Until now, Google has used Qualcomm chips on their Pixel phones and there have been no complaints from any parties as such. So it is interesting to know why Google is taking this route.
At the moment, Axios says that this new chip from Google is codenamed as “Whitechapel” and is made in partnership with Samsung based on a 5-nanometer process. The chip is also reported to be based on 8-core ARM-based processor and there is also a dedicated chip for machine learning and Google Assistant.
Now, this is not the first time we are hearing Google add a dedicated chip for Google Assistant because the company has always been talking a lot about how it is working on making Google Assistant on-device to make it faster and responsive.
Axios mentions that while the company has received its first working versions of the chip, it is unlikely to be added to their Pixel or Chromebooks before next year. It will be interesting to see how the Google-made chips perform in comparison to the competition such as Qualcomm and even MediaTek along with rivals such as Huawei’s HiSilicon and Apple’s own chips.
