In an era of software innovations, Google has one neat hardware trick in the Pixel 11 lineup. It’s a shame it’s not part of the whole lineup, though.
Google lifted the veil off the Pixel 11 series on Wednesday morning as part of its Made by Google event. Between anxiety around price increases and intrigue surrounding new AI features, one new hardware addition stood out: the HiLight feature. Available on the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro Fold devices, this is a new notification system that communicates things to the user when the phone is turned on its face.
I got to briefly try out HiLight at a press event before the announcement, and came away thinking it had potential. Unfortunately, some of that potential is being squandered by device exclusivity, for now.
Google Pixel 11 Pro HiLight hands-on: A cool feature that should be in every Pixel 11 phone
It’s on the Fold, too.
Credit: Rene Ramos / Mashable
I feel a primer is in order, given that HiLight is a brand-new Pixel 11 feature. In short, it’s a small circular light module that sits in the rear camera bar of the Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro Fold. At first, it doesn’t look like anything fancy, but it’s hiding a neat secret.
Put simply, HiLight will light up in different colors to notify the phone’s owner that something is happening on the phone while the device lies face down. If you’re locked in at work and don’t want to be distracted, but you still want to know if you’re getting an important phone call, HiLight will do the trick.
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HiLight is, in fact, mostly used for phone calls at this time, as far as I can tell. You can go into your contacts and assign custom light colors to individual people. I don’t have a full list of colors in front of me at this time, but there were no more than six or seven options. However, as someone who is mildly color deficient, I very much appreciated it when an on-site Google rep informed me that the colors were chosen to avoid confusion for people like me. The ones I saw all looked pretty distinct, though every color-deficient person’s eyes work differently.
If only every Pixel 11 had this.
Credit: Rene Ramos / Mashable
Strangely, HiLight does not seem to work with text messages at this point. I was told that new functionality will come in the future, though. The only other use case I was shown for HiLight was that it will light up in a rainbow pattern when Gemini is in use.
Smartphone enthusiasts will immediately recognize this as being inspired by Nothing’s hardware design over the years. That company has been making phones with light patterns on the rear side for years, for this same purpose. However, those tend to be bigger, more gaudy, and more feature-rich than HiLight is so far. I appreciate how visually modest HiLight is, though the functionality seems a bit thin at launch.
All of that is fine and good, but one thing I don’t understand at this juncture is why HiLight isn’t available on the base Pixel 11 phone. The same circular object is still present in the camera bar (presumably a camera flash module), but it doesn’t light up for notifications as it does on Pro devices. I think HiLight is cool, but it would make a much bigger impression if every Pixel 11 owner could use it.
Considering the base Pixel 11 is closer than ever to a Pro experience thanks to the recent addition of a telephoto lens, maybe Google felt the need to distinguish the two models a little bit more this year. That said, I hope the Pixel 12 rectifies this.
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