This year was a good year for the Google Pixel lineup with the launch of the Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a 5G, and Pixel 5. We also heard rumors of a Pixel 5 Pro that may appear next March.

But today a new rumor hit the net, and it concerns an all-new Pixel phone, the Pixel XE. The only question is whether this leak is legitimate or not.

The first clue that this phone appears is a screenshot discovered by Tom's Hardware showing the "About" menu in the Android phone's settings. The phone is called "Google Pixel XE" twice, once at the top under "Device Name" and once at the bottom under "Model and Hardware." The phone's name can be changed to anything you like, but not so for the "model," it seems.

The upper left corner of this screenshot also seems to indicate that the device has eight cores, so if it really is the Pixel XE, it doesn't look like a super cheap device that would rank below the Pixel 4a in Google's smartphone lineup. Also, this mystery device runs Android 11, which is only available on a handful of devices. All of this assumes that the image has not been manipulated in some way.

Another image, provided by SlashLeaks, shows off a very blurry phone, allegedly called the Google Pixel XE. But crucially, we do not actually see the model name, or the version of Android it is running - only the name of the phone.

As mentioned earlier, the phone could be named anything, even "Baby Yoda" if you wanted to. In other words, the SlashLeaks image proves absolutely nothing, and the fact that the model number is not visible is a bit suspicious.

Interestingly, the front camera is in the center of the screen, while the front camera on recent Pixel phones is in the upper left corner of the display. The close-up image appears to show the Pixel Launcher icon, but there is no camera in sight. Even if the Pixel XE were real, I would not put money on this being real unless there is more convincing evidence.