Motorola Shamu aka Nexus 6 gets benchmarked, indicating a 1080p display and Snapdragon 801

posted by Daniel P.

Aug 12, 2014, 9:41 AM

Motorola Shamu aka Nexus 6 gets benchmarked, indicating a 1080p display and Snapdragon 801

The GFXBenchmark database is the gift that keeps on giving today. After hosting the graphics score of a Sony D6603 device, which by all accounts and measures seems to be the upcoming Xperia Z3 flagship, now the benchmark site spills the beans on a possible Nexus 6 device, made by Motorola. Codenamed Shamu, we've seen references about it in Google code, and the internal titling is in line with Google's approach to naming its Nexus line of handsets and tablets.

We first heard about a possible collaboration between Google and the now Lenovo-owned Motorola for the making of Nexus 6 about two weeks ago, and the codename Shamu was bandied about then, too. Google christens its homebrew Nexus devices with the names of water creatures, so Shamu, which is a now-infamous killer whale show that was the star of the San Diego Sea World, is a hint in that direction, too.

Unfortunately, we can't really tell much from the benchmark, except the fact that the Motorola device's scores are in line with what the Snapdragon 801 chipset family manages to churn out, when used with a 1080p screen setup. The speculation so far is that it could sport a huge screen, on the side of the phablet range, but apparently that won't be a Quad HD panel, which we won't be missing much anyway. Oh, well, between the rumored Nexus 8 tablet, made by HTC, and this purported Nexus 6 candidate, it seems that the underdogs in the phone manufacturing business might be getting their own chance to shine with some Google-anointed light.