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First Sailfish/Marlin render shows aluminum design, G logo, lack of Nexus branding

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Last week brought the first concrete rumors about possible specs for this year’s Nexus devices made by HTC — codenamed Sailfish and Marlin. Android Police now has details and the first renders of what the two devices will look like. This year’s phones will seemingly be made of metal with either a glass or plastic rear pane and interestingly only a ‘G’ logo in lieu of Nexus branding…

Sailfish and Marlin will only be distinguished by size and have a similar design language, according to AP’s source. Both phones will have curved aluminum bodies and come in multiple colors, including a silver aluminum body with white face, black body and face, and a white face with a rear blue pane. The rear pane that contains the fingerprint sensor and camera could either be made of glass or a glossy plastic.

There is no camera bump on the rear, but there is a series of holes assumably for auto-focus and a secondary microphone. The rear fingerprint sensor is in the same place as last year and there are antenna lines on the top and bottom of the device. The render shows a front-facing camera, speaker grill, and white on-screen navigation buttons per a previous rumor.

Specs are rumored to the be a latest generation Qualcomm processor, 4GB of RAM, and 32 or 128GB of storage. There will be a 12MP rear camera, 8MP front facer, and 3,450mAH battery. There is a bottom-firing speaker and USB-C port at the bottom with a top mounted headphone jack. The Sailfish will feature a 5-inch 1080p display, while the Marlin has a 5.5-inch 2560×1440 AMOLED display.

Interestingly, it is possible that the only logo will be a ‘G’ at the bottom rear of the device. We’ve previously reported that this year’s phones will forgo any HTC branding, but the lack of Nexus branding as well possibly signals a shift in Google’s phone strategy. The two phones sporting a similar design language also suggests that Google is attempting a more unified branding and message for these phones.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com