Google’s folding Pipit phone reportedly passes though Geekbench, leaving a trail of specs to consider

The rumours of a folding Pixel phone from Google were awash in 2021, but it didn’t come to pass. Instead, rumours of a folding device – codenamed Pipit – have rolled into 2022.

A report said to come from Geekbench for the Pipit device appears to reveal some interesting details about the potential future phone.

The big thing here is that it point towards this device using Google Tensor, as found in the Pixel 6 models. That would make perfect sense, as Google has put its effort into developing its own hardware, so it’s likely to use that.

There’s said to be 12GB RAM, which seems like a lot, but it’s the same as the Pixel 6 Pro, which perhaps suggests where Google wants this phone to be performance-wise.

Of course, one Geekbench listing does not a confirmation make. We’ve seen any number of devices appear on these sorts of benchmarking services that are development devices, or prototypes, and many that never see the light of day.

It’s also perfectly feasible that it’s a fake too.

Whatever the reality, the decision for Google will be whether it should launch a folding phone to market. Given that Android development on folding phones will need a home, we wouldn’t be surprised if this was an engineering device rather than something for consumers.

Time will tell, however, and with more and more manufacturers looking to new form factors like folding phones, Google may wall want to keep in with the pack.

Given Google’s typical launch cycles, we wouldn’t expect to hear anything concrete until either the end of February when Mobile World Congress 2022 is scheduled to take place. Google often has a presence at the show and has made announcements there before.

That conference may suffer cancellations just as we saw at CES 2022 and a more likely event to showcase anything new would be Google I/O, likely to be in May 2022.