- Mention of ‘Pixel Glow’ feature 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 probably require dedicated hardware, so it could be a Pixel 11 feature
It’s getting harder for phones to differentiate themselves from each other, but Google may have found a way to help the Pixel 11 series at least stand out from most of the competition.
Your secret weapon could be something called ‘Pixel Glow,’ which Android Authority found mention while digging into the latest Android 17 beta. The site found a screen, which you can see below, detailing that Pixel Glow uses “subtle light and color on the back of your device to inform you of important activity when you’re face down.”
So it seems like this feature would use dedicated colored lights to alert you to notifications, and reading between the lines, different colors or patterns might notify you of different things, so you can know 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 flash alert you when you have a notification, but it looks like Pixel Glow will be more advanced than that.
Code strings found by Android Authority also suggest that this feature will work with Gemini in some way, and note that “the device must have hardware lights,” which presumably excludes existing Pixel phones.
A Nothing Phone rival?
But it remains to be seen exactly how light-filled the back of the Pixel 11 models could be, or how capable these lights will be. We doubt Google will go all-in on a gaming phone and match the amount of RGB lighting they feature, but Pixel Glow perhaps has some similarities to the Glyph lighting system found on most Nothing phones.
Regardless, it certainly sounds different from 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, it remains to be seen how cool Pixel Glow will be, but it certainly leaves us intrigued.
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