We've come to have reason to believe that Motorola and possibly Google are working on a 5.9" phone codenamed Shamu. That's about all we know. We know it showed up in Google's issue tracker, and that the issue was created by a known testing company who check prerelease hardware for just this sort of thing. We know the device is running a Google-built kernel and that this points to a Nexus or, at least, something Nexus-like. (I'm hoping for the latter because, well, pie.)

Anyway, 5.9" is a big phone indeed. The largest mainstream smartphone out there right is Samsung's Galaxy Note 3, which comes in at 5.7" - and that's a pretty big phone. There are other larger devices, of course (Xperia Z Ultra, G Flex, One Max, G Pro 2, Ascend Mate 2, for example), but those phones tend to fall into a niche that, while popular, isn't exactly favored by typical consumers. 5.5" seems to be the extent to which most OEMs are willing to stretch their devices at this point, with phones like the OnePlus One and LG G3 measuring that size.

5.9 inches, though, blows past the Galaxy Note 3 and teeters into this fringe area of super-sized phones. Granted, the demand for large phones from enthusiasts, the sort of people likely to buy a Nexus device, is almost certainly much higher than it is among the general phone-buying population. This does make some sense: Nexus devices are, first and foremost, meant to be development reference hardware for the Android team and developers. In the enthusiast space, big phones have been catching on for some time now, and Nexus phones have grown accordingly. While the Nexus 5 was a mere 4.95" across, it still grew around 0.3" from the Nexus 4, which grew only .05" from the Galaxy Nexus, which grew 0.65" from the Nexus S, which grew 0.3" from the Nexus One. All things added up, we've come from 3.7" Nexus phones to 5" Nexus phones, and that transformation occurred in a little under four years. Jumping to 5.9" would be the largest such change yet, though it doesn't seem totally unbelievable.

Anyway, big phones are still a divisive subject, and many people are starting to reach the limits of their desire (and their fingers) for a larger device. So, what say you: 5.9" Nexus phone - hot or not?