Google has yet to confirm that the follow-up to last year's Pixel 2 smartphone is underway. Although, rumors are rife that the search engine giant's next flagship, which is now prematurely referred to as the Google Pixel 3, will be released later this year.

While there is no solid evidence of the Pixel 3 arriving anytime soon, a line of code from Google's own source code may have already spilled the company's plans for the handset.

Given the success of the Pixel 2, as well as the first Pixel phone, it will not be surprising if Google decides to continue on with the Pixel 3 this year. This speculation is supported by XDA Developers' recent spotting of a commit on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) website. There is an interesting sentence included in the commit, which mentions a certain Pixel 3 device.

The AOSP has the line "This change added the config because the HAL V_1_2 only supports Pixel 3," which can be a proof that Google is now beginning the initial software tests for the new Pixel smartphone entry. The fact that this line was retrieved from Google's own source code makes it even more believable. Furthermore, this somehow puts an end to the question of what name will be used for the Pixel 2 successor, according to Tech Radar.

For those who are not familiar with the words in the AOSP, it was explained that "HAL" stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer, a software feature that links together the Android operating system (OS) and the hardware that will be using the OS. Unfortunately, the source code does not reveal too much about the possible features of the Google Pixel 3, although XDA speculates that the HAL will allow for an continuous scan for networks, instead of a manual network scan by tapping on the screen. 

For now, the AOSP source code can only confirm that Google is already working on the Pixel 3. More details are likely to be disclosed in the coming months as smartphone nears its completion. There are about six months left before the expected launch of the new Pixel device in October.