Nexus 2016 release date speculated as May 18

Speculations indicate that Google will be announcing its Android VR headset at the upcoming Google I/O 2016 event that will begin on May 18. Rumours are also indicating that the company will be announcing an upgraded variant of Nexus 6P from last year.

Recently, a new variant of Nexus 6P was spotted on GeekBench by MyDrivers, a Chinese source. It revealed that the smartphone is powered by Snapdragon 820 chipset and 4 GB of RAM. It is the same combination of CPU and RAM that powers 2016 flagship smartphones.

The alleged smartphone is dubbed as Nexus 6P (2016) by the rumour mill. The benchmarking site has revealed that the Nexus 6P (2016) will arrive preinstalled with Android N OS. It has recorded a single core of 2115 and multi-core score of 4,903.

The Huawei Nexus 6P, the flagship smartphone from 2015 that is fueled by Snapdragon 810 chipset and 3 GB of RAM is facing heavy competition from 2016 flagship smartphones like Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC 10, LG G5, Sony Xperia X Performance and others. The price of Nexus 6P is lower than the new flagship smartphones, but its performance is not on par with them.

AnTuTu, the most preferred benchmarking platforms for smartphones and tablets, had published the top 10 smartphone chips according to their performance. The Snapdragon 820 with quad-core CPU and Adreno 530 GPU grabbed the numero uno spot. It recorded the highest score of 136,383. However, the Snapdragon 810 that includes an octa-core CPU and Adreno 430 graphics was ranked on the sixth place with a score of 81,049.

Since the Nexus 6P appears weaker when compared to 2016 flagships, rumours are suggesting that Nexus 6P (2016) may get announced at Google I/O 2016 on Wednesday. The search engine giant is also expected to be working with HTC in releasing two Nexus 2016 smartphones later this year.

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