- Mention of a ‘Pixel Glow’ feature has been found in an Android 17 beta
- This feature would apparently use colored lights on the back of the phone to alert you to notifications
- It would likely require dedicated hardware, so it could be a Pixel 11 feature
It’s getting harder and harder for phones to differentiate themselves from each other, but Google may have found a way to help the Pixel 11 series stand out from at least most of the competition.
Its secret weapon may be something called ‘Pixel Glow’, which Android Authority has found mention of while digging around in the latest Android 17 beta. The site found a screen — which you can see below — that describes Pixel Glow as using “subtle light and color on the back of your device to inform you of important activity when it’s facing down.”
So it sounds like this feature would use dedicated colored lights to alert you to notifications, and reading between the lines, it could be possible for different colors or patterns to notify you of different things, so you can see what kind of notification your phone has received without picking it up.
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You can already use the ‘Flash notifications’ feature to have the camera’s flash alert you when you have a notification, but Pixel Glow sounds like it’ll be more advanced than that.
Code strings found by Android Authority also suggest that this feature will work with Gemini in some way, noting that “the device must have hardware light,” presumably counting out existing Pixel phones.
A Nothing Phone rival?
But exactly how light-filled the back of Pixel 11 models can be, or how capable those lights will be, remains to be seen. We doubt Google will go full gaming phone and match the number of RGB lights on them, but the Pixel Glow might have some similarities to the Glyph lighting system found on most Nothing phones.
Regardless, it certainly sounds different to anything found on phones from mainstream rivals like Samsung and Apple, and early reactions to the idea seem mostly positive, with people on Reddit saying things like “RIP Nothing Phone” and “This is cool.”
Still, how cool Pixel Glow will actually be remains to be seen, but it certainly leaves us intrigued.
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