Google Pixel 2 Taimen Hits Geekbench With Strong Scores, 4GB RAM And Android O

One of Google's forthcoming Pixel 2 devices has found its way to Geekbench, giving us a better idea of what specifications to expect and how it might perform. The device in question is codenamed "Taimen," named after a large fish that can tip the scales at up to 220 pounds. It is one of three Pixel 2 devices Google has on tap, the other two featuring codenames "Walleye" and "Muskie," which are also named after large fish.

We'll get to the Geekbench listing in a moment, but first let's talk about these codenames. References to all three fish were discovered when digging through code in Google's latest AOSP (Android Open Source Project). It's been assumed that they refer to Pixel 2 handsets, though the presence of three fishy codenames with one being much larger than the other two has led to speculation that Taimen could be a tablet.

This might be reading too far into things, but while taimen can grow up to 220 pounds, walleyes and muskies are much smaller at up to 24 pounds and 38 pounds, respectively. If Google is taking those sizes into consideration, then it is conceivable that Walleye is a Pixel 2, Muskie is a Pixel 2 XL, and Taimen is a Pixel tablet. We'll have to wait and see.


As to the Geekbench listing, it shows Taimen swimming with a Qualcomm octa-core processor (presumably a Snapdragon 835) clocked at 1.9GHz. The listing also indicates 4GB of RAM and Google's next-generation Android O operating system, which is currently available for testing as a Developer Preview release.

Taimen posted a single-score score of 1,804 and a multi-core score of 6.248 in Geekbench. Those are decent, though not mind blowing. To put it into perspective, scores for the forthcoming OnePlus 5 were recently leaked, with the unreleased handset hitting 1,963 in single-core performance and 6,687 in multi-core performance. And in our own testing, we also saw higher multi-core scores from the Galaxy S8 (6,258) and Galaxy S8+ (6,333).

It could be several months still before we know for sure if Taimen is a phone or a tablet—Google launched its Pixel and Pixel XL devices in October of last year.