Google is slated to announce the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones on October 4th. These are supposedly made by HTC, and will be the first smartphones made under the "Pixel" branding, as Google has reportedly opted to do away with the "Nexus" branding this year. The Pixel XL, as you might have guessed, is the larger smartphone. Which sports the codename "Marlin". It's rumored to be sporting a 5.5-inch QHD display, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 821 processor along with 4GB of RAM and the choice of either 32GB or 128GB of storage inside. There's also a 12-megapixel camera on the back with a 8-megapixel front-facing shooter.

The render that you see above, is the latest to surface ahead of the official announcement by Google. This render was made by TechDroider, who used their own source, as well as the other renders that have already surfaced. The render looks pretty similar to the others that have surfaced already. Although it's a bit darker – that doesn't mean that the Pixel XL will resemble the jet black color of the new iPhones. There's still that "window" at the top of the backside of the Pixel XL, which is where many of the sensors are located. Like Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, etc. This is needed because it's easier for those to penetrate glass, as opposed to aluminum. The Nexus 6P had a window too, but it was much smaller than this.

The front of the Pixel XL looks similar to many other HTC smartphones. However, there is no fingerprint sensor nor a home button on the front, which many of HTC's devices have sported as of late. Instead that fingerprint sensor is located on the backside of the device. As the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P had. The Pixel XL is slated to be a pretty costly smartphone from Google. It won't be as cheap as the Nexus 4 or Nexus 5 were, but it may come pretty close to the price of the Nexus 6P which launched last year for around $449 for the 32GB model. Which was actually quite low, compared to its competitors. And if the Pixel XL does hit that price point this year, it'll also be much lower than its competitors.

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