The ‘a’ series of phones is Google’s answer to the more premium handsets flooding the market that seem to be getting exponentially more pricey each year, but it has to drop features in order to do so.
The latest of those is 5G. We’ve already had an iffy five minutes about whether we’d see an XL version of the 4a, and the possibility of a 5G model has been up in the air with conflicting reports based on various code names that have been ferreted out in the code of the latest Google App updates. And the latest rumour seems to confirm that, unsurprisingly, there will be no Google Pixel 4a 5G.
XDA Developers claims to have an inside source that has confirmed that the Pixel 4a is indeed the device referenced as ‘Sunfish’ which we know utilises Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 730. That particular chipset doesn’t support 5G so that alone gives us the answer in that front.
There were rumours last year that Google was planning on releasing a 5G smartphone and when the Pixel 4 was release without 5G capability, Brian Rakowski, Google’s VP of product management, explained that this was because the technology “isn’t quite ready for consumers,” adding “it will get there, but now is not the right time to buy a 5G phone.”
The other code names around the 4a lineup that we’ve seen so far include ‘Redfin’ and ‘Bramble’, which both made reference to the 5G-enabled Snapdragon 765 chipset, although Bramble isn’t being developed by an ODM (original design manufacturer) so if Redfin is the Pixel 4a XL, there’s still a possibility that we could see a 5G handset there. [SlashGear]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.