New Google Pixel phone appears at FCC

A new Google Pixel phone has appeared with the FCC, and there are only two possible candidates.

The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC for short, is the official US communications regulator. Every smartphone and connected device has to pass through this agency before it can be sold in the country.

An appearance at the FCC, then, is almost as good as an official announcement in terms of trustworthiness. That’s why we’re intrigued by the FCC appearance of a new Google phone, even if we don’t know exactly what it is.

Three variants of a single Google phone have cropped up for approval, under the code names G0DZQ, GHL1X, and GWKK3. Each of these phones “use the same identical internal printed circuit board layouts”, indicating that they’re different SKUs of the same model. There’s also the mention of a fourth device, the G82U8.

No details are provided about the size or appearance of these phones, so we can only speculate as to what they may be. As mentioned at the outset, there are only two possible candidates for this mystery Google device: the Google Pixel 7a and the Google Pixel Fold.

The Pixel 8 presumably won’t be launching until the very end of the year, and an FCC appearance generally points to a fairly quick turn around.

There have been some significant Pixel 7a-related leaks of late, pointing to a 90Hz display, improved camera system, and the addition of wireless charging. One recent hands-on even revealed a codename of ‘2A281FQHN’, which seems very similar indeed to those FCC listings.

We’d place money on the company launching at least one of these phones at Google I/O in May.