More Evidence Emerges for the HTC Nexus 8 “Flounder;” Google “Molly” Appears!

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Earlier today, we talked a bit about how the next Nexus device might be codenamed “Flounder.” This code name, which first appeared in the Chromium issue tracker, fits squarely inline with the rest of Google’s sea-themed hardware (e.g. Mako, Hammerhead, Steelhead, Flo, Tilapia, Crespo, and so on).

At the time of the previous article, we still had quite a few questions about this upcoming “Flounder” device. Sure, we knew the code name, as well as the build number it ran, but many questions were left unanswered. Which OEM would be producing this device? Is it going to be the next Nexus smartphone or tablet? Will its power level be over 9000?

Well folks, thanks to the Android 4.4.3 (KitKat MR2) changelist, we now know that the device will be manufactured by HTC. As seen in lines 239-245 of the KitKat MR2 Changelist document on the AOSP website:

project device/htc/flounder/

f6f0fe7 flounder: fix KGDB port

d9a03bc flounder: take out conservative cpufreq governor a.o. extraneous stuff

091c1c1 flounder: add Power HAL project device/htc/flounder-kernel/

6090a06 flounder: update kernel prebuilt

While it’s still unknown what form factor this HTC-built Nexus will take, it is highly likely given all the previous rumors that we may be seeing the first signs of the Google Nexus 8. Curiously, however, Flounder isn’t all that the KitKat MR2 changelog has in store for us. There’s also mention of a “Google Molly” in lines 214-237:

project device/google/molly/

60f0dd6 molly: keystore: add keystore hal

1dcb7b7 molly: correcting too wide permissions for certain devnodes

eadd23b molly: set permissions for nvhost-msenc

c554447 [molly][drm] Implement rules for Discretix module

787e5e7 Fix the file permission for mbtchar0

fe0c51a Update releasetools.py to support separate prod and test key bootloaders

e610c57 Set BT minor code to SET_TOP_BOX instead of HIFI.

5d64459 molly: Do not init p2p for wlan0 interface

c0626ba Disable throughput hinting for gpu frequency scaler. project device/google/molly-kernel/

81386aa Update kernel

11ab4e9 Update kernel

9d7bca3 Update kernel

bea8097 Update kernel

55591db Update kernel

342aa11 Update kernel

481e0a6 Update kernel:

b904ad3 Update kernel

4d2f31f Update kernel

dc305ba Update kernel

d508d83 Update kernel

5668370 Update kernel

So what do you guys make of all of this? Is the HTC-built “Flounder” the next mid-sized Nexus tablet, or will it be the Nexus 5‘s successor? What about Google Molly? Let us know all of your wildest theories in the comments below!

[Many thanks to the_commenter for the tip!]