Razer Phone 2 (“aura”) shows up in Play Console with 8GB RAM, Snapdragon 835, and Chroma app

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If we look back at 2017’s flagship smartphones and consider which ones were trendsetters, it’s hard not to bring up the first generation Razer Phone. The smartphone, with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 8GB RAM, and 5.7-inch 120Hz IGZO-IPS display, started the gaming phone trend we’ve seen this year with the Asus ROG Phone, Nubia Red Magic, Honor Play, Doogee S70, and more. Razer confirmed that a second generation Razer Phone would launch this year and they’ve sent out press invites to an event on October 10th, and now the device has been certified by Google Play and appears on the Google Play Console.

Not a lot of information has been leaked online regarding the Razer Phone 2, though we don’t expect the device to differ that much from last year’s model. There were rumors of Chroma LED effects for notifications and purported press renders showed few changes in the design. The Google Play Console listing doesn’t give us any new information, though it contradicts one rumor while corroborating another.

The listing reveals that the device’s code-name is “aura.” Last year’s model was code-named “cheryl,” for reference. The listing also shows that the phone has 8GB RAM and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip with the Adreno 540 GPU. This is strange since we would expect the second generation model to sport the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip with the Adreno 630 GPU. There’s a small possibility of this being an error, but given that this information was submitted BY Razer TO Google, we think that’s unlikely. OEMs can complete CTS certification ahead of time and ask Google to hold off on making it public, but we’re not sure why this listing was made public so early.

Update: After speaking to a few trusted sources, we aren’t as confident anymore that the Razer Phone 2 listing is accurate. It’s unclear who is responsible at Google for writing the description and based on what information. It’s clear the information is submitted by Razer, but it’s unclear if that information is based on actual device properties submitted during CTS certification or marketing information that Razer copy and pasted from the original Razer Phone. It’s unusual for a high-profile device to show up in the Google Play Console ahead of launch, however.

The listing also shows that the device will have a resolution of 1440×2560 (same as last year) and runs Android 8.1 Oreo (last year’s launched with Android 7.1 Nougat but received an update to Android 8.1 Oreo.) Lastly, the render included in the listing shows a pre-installed “Chroma” app that could be the rumored app to control LED effects for notifications. I asked one of our writers with the Razer Phone as well as looked at a system dump of “cheryl”, but could not find such an app on the existing model.

If we discover more information on the upcoming Razer Phone 2, we’ll let you all know.