A few months ago, it seemed that Google had killed the Nexus line of devices, and the Nexus 5 was to remain the last one in the series. Reports from notable bloggers including @evleaks all agreed that Google was about to not only switch its focus from Nexus to the new Android Silver program for affordable markets, but also kill the Nexus series altogether. Then, we heard that Google’s Chief Business Officer, and the main proponent of Android Silver within the company, Nikesh Arora had left. This turned out to mean one thing: the Nexus was back in business.At first, we were talking about a Nexus 6, a placeholder name that did the job done for the time being, but as more evidence started piling up, we started hearing more about a mysterious Motorola ‘Shamu’, a device uncovered in the Android Open Source Project’s code-base by Android Police at the end of July.
After all those small fish, it was time for something bigger like a whale. It was time to get excited: after all, Shamu is the name of the killer whale that has survived the most in captivity. Most importantly, it is a name of fish, and that is exactly what Google traditionally uses for its Nexus devices: the Nexus 5 was ‘Hammerhead’, the Nexus 4 carried the ‘Mako’ shark codename, and the Galaxy Nexus was developed under the ‘Tuna’ moniker.
