The Google Pixel, Google's first-ever self-branded smartphone, is the best Android device you can buy. The origins of the device are something of a curiosity, though. Google stopped the Nexus line to move into the hardware arena itself, but then the company produced a piece of hardware that wasn't very different from a Nexus, or very different from what anyone else was doing.

The official line from Google's Rick Osterloh is that the device is "Made by Google," with Google doing "the design work and a lot of the engineering." HTC is described as the "contract manufacturer," playing a similar role that Foxconn does for Apple. Look closer, though, and you'll see a lot of evidence that suggests HTC had a larger hand in the design than Google is willing to admit.

We're only a few days removed from the ship date of the Pixel phones, but rumors and reports have already popped up to paint a better picture of what the Pixel's development may really have been like.

From Huawei to HTC

The most interesting tidbit comes from David Pierce, a senior staff writer at our sister site Wired. Speaking on the Wired Podcast, Pierce said he was told that the Pixel phones had a mere nine months of development time. After asking Google why the phone didn't have the same level of water resistance as other high-end flagships, Pierce said, "their answer was essentially 'We ran out of time.' There apparently had been this plan for a long time, and at the end of 2015, they blew it all up and started over. So they essentially went from nothing to launch in nine months and a week."

Let's examine this timeline. Why would Google "blow everything up" at the end of 2015? We can fill in the blanks with a report from Android Police, which claims that Google's 2016 smartphone lineup was originally going to be built by Huawei.

"Shortly after the Nexus 5X and 6P launched, Google began talks with Huawei to produce its 2016 smartphone portfolio," the report reads. "Google, though, set a hard rule for the partnership: Huawei would be relegated to a manufacturing role, producing phones with Google branding." According to the report, Huawei balked at the lack of branding, and "CEO Richard Yu himself ended negotiations with Google right then and there."

If we put these two accounts together, it's easy to conclude that Google and Huawei's talks ate into the development time of the Google/HTC Pixel. When the decision to go with a self-branded phone came down, Huawei walked away, which led to—as Pierce said—Google "blowing everything up" and switching to HTC.

The timeline also lines up with a report from The Information. In February 2016—eight months before the launch of the Pixel phones—The Information said that Google planned to take "Apple-like control" over its future smartphones via a partnership with HTC.

Nine months of development time explains a lot

Nine months is an incredibly short amount of time to bring a smartphone to market. Back when Google owned Motorola, the company frequently talked about having an "18-month pipeline" of products that it needed to work though. If Google really did have about half that amount of time to develop the Pixel, it's hard to imagine that Google single-handedly designed its first-ever smartphone from scratch.

More than likely, the company heavily leaned on HTC in developing and designing the Pixel. We see tons of evidence that supports this theory. The first clue is something that anyone with eyes can see—it looks a lot like an HTC phone, specifically the newer devices like the HTC A9 and HTC Desire 10. iFixit recently cracked open the Pixel and showed the world what the insides look like, and there seems to be an HTC influence there, too. Above, we have the iFixit teardowns of a few phones compared to an HTC A9 teardown from How2Tech

Over at XDA Developers, people are finding more and more evidence that HTC's involvement went beyond being a Foxconn-style manufacturer. The Pixel and Pixel XL kernels contain over 350 commits from HTC engineers, and a mysterious "htc_cerberus" label was stripped out of the source code. Thanks to Android security research Jon "Justin Case" Sawyer, we also know HTC did work on the Pixel bootchain. Sawyer describes the Pixels as having "a standard HTC bootchain" that is "written and signed by HTC."

That "HTC Cerberus" reference is interesting since it sounds a lot like a device codename. "Cerberus" is a three-headed dog monster from Greek mythology, and HTC often likes to name its in-development devices after figures from Greek mythology. Take a look at this list of HTC devices, and you see projects named after constellations, like Libra, Leo, and Gemini, and Greek deities like Nike, Athena, Phoebus, Hermes, Artemis, and Atlas. "Cerberus" would be right at home in that list. Was "HTC Cerberus" the codename of an HTC-branded device that eventually morphed into a Google/HTC project?

Setting expectations for next year

I would say all the evidence points to Google leaning heavily on HTC for the design of the Pixel. After a deal with Huawei fell through, Google and HTC put the Pixel together in only nine months. Most likely, the only reason this accelerated development was possible is because Google took an existing HTC project, the HTC Cerberus, and remodeled it into a Pixel phone. This explains why the inside and outside of the Pixel looks just like an HTC phone—it started out life that way.

This also wouldn't be the first Pixel device to have an interesting behind-the-scenes story. The last Pixel device, the Pixel C, seems to have bounced through several software packages during its development. Commits to the Chrome OS and Android codebases suggested the Pixel C started with touch-based version of Chrome OS, then it moved to dual booted Android and Chrome OS, and it eventually settled on running only Android at release.

The Pixel phone hardware is great for something that was quickly developed, but the phones are rather bland and unambitious, and now we have an explanation for that. Rather than being "the best Google can do," the Pixel is likely "the best Google can do in a very limited amount of time." I think in a few years we'll look back on the first Pixel phone as a transition device—a halfway point between "Nexus" and "Pixel" that wasn't quite a full "Google" phone.

For the next Pixel phone, Google should have a lot more development time. Dave Burke, Android's VP of Engineering, told Bloomberg that he has already seen photo samples from the device Google will debut next year. That puts the Pixel 2 at a minimum of 12 months of development time, though with the camera already under development, it's probably closer to 18.

As Google slots into a more standard device development cycle, hopefully it will be able to produce hardware that is more competitive with the Apples and Samsungs of the world. We'd love to get something with a more distinct design, allowing the Pixel to stand out from (or at least not be frequently mistaken for) the iPhone. Ultimately, users should want something that justifies Google's move into smartphone hardware.

The story behind the Pixel is important, since it gives a peek into Google's hardware ambitions. This year was just the first step, and apparently it was a very rushed first step. With Dave Burke promising plans for "custom silicon" in future devices, hopefully we've just seen the tip of the iceberg for Google's smartphone plans.