Google retired the Nexus 7 this week, which follows up on the retirement of the company’s Nexus 5. This better mean we’re going to see some major hardware announcements at Google’s I/O conference in late May—or Google may risk losing control of Android’s direction.

The Nexus phones and tablets are small in sales, but mighty in influence. They are the guaranteed pure-Google gadgets, showing the direction Google wants to go in with its software and where it’s trying to drag Android manufacturers. While not many people own Nexus phones, they tend to be coders, designers, and influencers. To some extent, Nexus is the glue that holds Google’s Android ecosystem together.

Google made a big Nexus step forwards with its recent announcement of Google Fi, its hybrid wireless carrier. By combining Sprint, T-Mobile, and Wi-Fi, Google Fi is supposed to show virtual operators how to do things, injecting more competition into the wireless space. It’s a stab at one concept of 5G: a system that skips between several different kinds of networks invisibly to the user.

Google Fi is now only compatible with the Nexus 6, which is a huge phablet. Tablet-wise, all Google has left in its Nexus department is the relatively unsuccessful Nexus 9, which has an interesting if little-used Nvidia processor but doesn’t hit the sweet spot in Android demand, which is for a smaller, less-expensive but still high-quality tablet.

Yes, we’re seeing lots of affordable unlocked Android phones out there; the Huawei SnapTo, the Moto G, and Blu’s lineup all come to mind. But none of them promise to always deliver the best pure Google experience, and none of them have really seized the hearts of power users and developers.
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