- The next Pixel Feature Drop may land on November 4th
- This may include theme packs to change the look and sound of your phone
- It can also let you create GIFs and animated stickers and prioritize certain notifications
If you have a Pixel phone, you don’t have to wait for new versions of Android to get new features, as Google routinely releases Pixel-specific ‘Feature Drops’. And the next of these updates could include some major upgrades to the top Pixel phones.
Leaker group Mystic Leaks (via 9to5Google) has shared screenshots and videos showing the supposed upcoming features, and these include theme packs, custom animations, and priority notifications.
Perhaps the most exciting of these are the theme packs, which with a single tap will apply a wallpaper along with matching icons, GIFs and sounds. At first it appears to be one Wicked: Too Good theme pack will launch, consisting of ‘For Good’, ‘Glinda’ and ‘Elphaba’ themes, but we hope more packs will follow.
If they do, these can be an easy way to significantly change the look of the interface on your Pixel phone.
Create GIFs and give people the VIP treatment
Next, there’s the ability to turn a photo or Pixel Studio creation into a GIF or animated sticker, and finally, there’s an update to the Pixel VIPs feature, which ensures that messages sent from people you designate as ‘VIPs’ will have their messages highlighted in yellow and the person’s contact photo visible in the status bar.
The goal here is to make these messages easier to spot, so you don’t miss them among an influx of notifications—though note that this feature only works with messages sent via WhatsApp and Google Messages.
In any case, this sounds like quite a good mix of upgrades, and the Feature Drop could be coming soon, with the leak suggesting a November 4th release.
But until this update actually rolls out, we’ll take these rumors with a grain of salt, as the images look believable, it hasn’t been long since the last Pixel Feature Drop. Plus, as 9to5Google notes, we also expect to see Android 16 QPR2 land before the end of the year, and this will also include a number of new features. So the supposed timing of this Feature Drop is a bit odd.
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