This year’s Google phones reportedly won’t feature Nexus branding

As we near the fall season and subsequent high-end phone launches that come with it, a new report has surfaced that suggests that Google is taking a hard turn when it comes to its premiere flagship lineup of smartphones.

According to information obtained by Android Central, Google plans to drop the "Nexus" brand from the smartphones it plans to launch this year. Those two handsets are reportedly manufactured by HTC, codenamed "Sailfish" and "Marlin," and previous leaks have indeed shown the design of those devices dropping the Nexus brand and carrying a Google logo instead.

The report states that Google isn't just dropping the Nexus brand, but that it will be adopting a different brand instead. What that will be remains a mystery. It's expected that Google will be eschewing the HTC name, too, and will market the device heavily as its own handset. Basically, this won't be a Nexus-branded HTC-built phone, but a Google phone.

On top of that, Google is allegedly changing things up with the software this time around, too. Instead of opting for a stock Android experience, Google will be adding software and tweaking the interface for its new phones. That would line up with the change from the Nexus brand, too, which has typically meant a barebones Android experience without any additional software or tweaks thrown in. Changing the brand and the software experience together makes sense.

The original report does state that it's unknown at this time whether or not Google will be dropping the Nexus brand altogether, but considering these new phones are launching in the same window that Nexus phones typically would, the safe guess is that Google is moving forward with this new brand and vision and leaving "Nexus" behind with the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X.

Finally, the report claims that Google does plan on launching its own Google-branded Android Wear smartwatches at some point in the future, which would seem to corroborate previous rumors.

What do you think of this shift in ideas from Google?

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