TL;DR Photos of the Google Pixel “needlefish” have leaked online.
Once rumored to be a Pixel 4 family member, the device sported a Snapdragon 855 with an X55 modem and 8GB of RAM.
It’s likely the device was merely a tool for Google to evaluate and learn about 5G before more mature hardware was available.
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.
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