Google ‘Pixel 5a’ makes first appearance in AOSP days before Pixel 4a launch

Kyle Bradshaw | Jul 31 2020 - 12:22 pm PT

Just yesterday, Google began teasing the mid-range Pixel 4a along with an August 3 date. Today, though, we’ve got our first glimpse at the mid-range Pixel phone for 2021 — the “Pixel 5a” in the Android Open Source Project.

As of earlier this month, we’re fairly confident that we know the three Google Pixel phones for 2020 — namely the mid-range Pixel 4a, upper-mid-range Pixel 4a (5G), and the premium Pixel 5. Our Stephen Hall has already explained what to expect from these three phones in great detail.

With those mysteries more or less solved, our attention has already turned to 2021’s Made by Google phones. With the success of the Pixel 3a and the amount of excitement around the much-delayed Pixel 4a, it would be no surprise to see Google continue offering mid-range phones for the foreseeable future.

Today, though, we’ve got concrete evidence that Google is indeed working on a mid-range phone in 2021 called the “Pixel 5a.” This comes from a code change in the Android Open Source Project, where a developer makes direct mentions to essentially the entire Google Pixel phone lineup and what version of Android it launched or will launch with.

As spotted by our Dylan Roussel, in the list of devices, we see the three upcoming Pixel phones we already knew about — the Pixel 4a, 4a (5G), and Pixel 5 — as well as a direct mention of a Pixel “5a.”

So what all do we learn from this initial mention? Firstly, we now know that the Google Pixel 5a is in development. Second, we can guess that just like the Pixel 3a and 4a, the Pixel 5a will release in the middle of the year, as it will be on Android 11 (R) instead of next fall’s Android 12.

What we don’t know is what kind of hardware this Pixel 5a would run on. That sort of information typically doesn’t appear in the Android Open Source Project until after a device has released. Either way, it’s exciting to have confirmation that Google is going to continue releasing quality mid-range phones for the foreseeable future.