Exclusive first look: This is the canceled Google Pixel 4 5G

The Google Pixel series is notoriously prone to leaks. Typically, we know everything about the next Pixel phones months before their announcement, but occasionally, the odd rumored device never arrives, leaving us with a mystery. This was the case with the canceled first-gen Pixel Fold, codenamed “pipit,” for example, until we showcased what it was last year.

Another of these mysteries is the alleged third flagship Pixel 4 device, codenamed “needlefish.” There were many theories about what it could be, but we had never seen any concrete details, until now. Thanks to a photo leak and our sources, we’ve managed to get to the bottom of what the mysterious handset was.

What exactly is Google’s “needlefish?”

Let’s start by recapping what we know about the device codename “needlefish”:

• It’s considered a Pixel 4 family flagship phone by the Google Camera app.
• The device was most likely in development before the Pixel 4a series, as evidenced by how early we’ve seen some of the references.

Not a lot to go off, huh? Now let’s look at what we’ve found out from the new leak.

The newly leaked photos show a device that resembles the Pixel 4 XL. We can see a display with a top bezel housing the front camera, along with hardware for IR face unlock and a Project Soli radar. The device opens fully from the back, which was only ever a thing on the Pixel 4 series phones, not the 4a.

However, the phone’s internals look somewhat different from the regular Pixel 4 XL, with what appear to be mmWave antenna modules on the top right and alongside the lower part of the left side of the phone. Lastly, the battery is slightly larger than the one in the Pixel 4 XL (at 3800mAh versus 3700mAh) and lists the alleged model number of the phone — G025B.

The fastboot screen also provides some interesting information. It appears the phone is also called “U3” — while the Pixel 4 XL (codenamed “coral”) was called “C2” and the smaller Pixel 4 (“flame”) was “F2.” The device also sports 8GB of RAM, up from 6GB on the regular Pixel 4 devices.

Perhaps the most intriguing, though, is the modem version. Google tends to prefix those values with the model of the modem hardware, plus a “g” at the very beginning. For example, the Exynos Modem 5123 is “g5123” and the integrated modem in the Snapdragon 855 (model “SM8150”) is “g8150.”

In this case, we see “g55,” which suggests that we’re probably dealing with Qualcomm’s standalone X55 modem with support for 5G. That, plus what little we know about the device, suggests we’re dealing with a fairly obscure combo of the Snapdragon 855 with the X55, which was only ever used in the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition (what an awful name, ugh.)

As we know, Google never launched this product, so what’s going on here?

The early days of 5G weren’t the standard’s best. The world’s first phone modem that supported it was the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 — and it was a bit weird. Qualcomm announced it in late 2016; however, we had to wait until 2019 for the first devices with it to ship, as the 3GPP standard regulating 5G wasn’t finalized until then. The X50 was perhaps more of an experimental platform and a research tool than a refined final product. For that, we had to wait for the Snapdragon X55. It launched in 2019, with devices shipping in 2020.

All these products had a major drawback, though. They were standalone chips, which are always less efficient due to duplicated components and (typically) the use of less efficient process nodes than the main SoC. Fortunately, Qualcomm was already working on a solution, in the form of SoCs with integrated modems.

The first one was the Snapdragon 765, which was planned to launch a few months after the X55. Being the first of its kind, the launch wasn’t without its difficulties. Qualcomm struggled to get the chip fully working, and as a result, the 5G-capable samples of the chip took several months to ship to partners after the 4G launch.

This was an issue, as designing for 5G presented a completely new challenge compared to 4G, both in terms of hardware and software. Partners that didn’t launch with the X50 were already at a disadvantage, and one of them was Google.

This is most likely the reason needlefish even exists. The Snapdragon 765 integrated what was essentially a cut-down X55, so to gain a few months’ head start, Google redesigned the Pixel 4 XL to support 5G at minimal cost. It seems rather unlikely there was ever any plan to launch this device — the final versions of the X55 shipped too late for Google to launch it alongside the regular Pixel 4 family, and it wouldn’t make sense to launch a Snapdragon 855 phone when there was already the 865, if it were to launch later.

Something that appears to confirm that theory is the device’s revision: EVT1.4. Google phones typically reach EVT1.2 at most before being deemed ready to advance to the Design Validation Testing (DVT) stage. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google struggled with the brand-new 5G and mmWave challenge, taking a few revisions to get the support right.

We’ll probably never learn if that’s what actually happened, but hey, at least we now know something about what this thing was supposed to be.