For the last few years Google has used LG, Huawei and, when it was its own brand, Motorola to build Nexus phones. Samsung preceded those. But the first manufacturer of a Nexus smartphone, released six years ago, was actually HTC.

Now it is heavily rumoured that the Taiwanese company is about to get another bite of the cheery as Chinese online chatter suggests that the next Nexus phone will be a HTC model.

There is little substantiation to the rumours at present, save for the fact that they are plentiful, and few facts. But it is suggested that HTC will make two separate devices, which will have smaller screens than the current Nexus 5X and 6P handsets, at 5 and 5.5-inches instead of 5.2 and 5.7.

A tweet from @LlabTooFeR suggests the codenamed will be T50 and T55. Something to keep an eye out for then. 

Google working with HTC again for a phone or two is not that far fetched, after all the manufacturer made the Google Nexus 9 tablet last year.

READ: Best smartphones to look forward to in 2016

It's still early days for rumours though, with last year's models not launched until September. And there are plenty of other phones from all the major brands still to be announced and released in the interim. Mobile World Congress is only a month away, of course, and we expect LG and Samsung, at the very least, to reveal new flagship devices.

We will keep you informed if we hear any more though.