The Pixel 'HiLight' is a LowLight

Pixel 11 Pro’s ‘HiLight’ is another half-baked feature burdened by bad first impressions

Google’s Pixel 11 launches with a new “HiLight” feature that’s full of potential, but half-baked and left with a bad first impression.

9to5GoogleBen Schoon

Presentation aside, clearly this was a bit of a muted year for Pixel hardware. Some small upgrades, some actual downgrades, and – undoubtedly related to both – price increases. The one new stand-out feature, hardware-wise at least, for the devices was clearly the 'HiLight' indicator in the camera bump. Much like BlackBerrys of old – which everyone keeps trying to get back to, it seems – this gives you a visual alert to a notification. Unfortunately, it sounds like it's comically under-implemented, to the point of being pointless:

That’s where this year’s “HiLight” feature comes into play. The rear-facing LED is available on all three Pixel 11 Pro models, and somehow it feels more half-baked than the temperature sensor.

This feature currently exists for exactly two functions – to tell you when a favorite contact is calling you, and to indicate that Gemini is active.

That’s it.

It's completely inexplicable that this notification is only for phone calls and not messages. I mean, even BlackBerry did that! Google seems to be messaging that this could come down the road, but how do you not launch with this? Who gives a shit about phone call notifications? The phone functionality is arguably the least interesting element of modern smartphones.

But even better would be:

Also, elephant in the room, why in the world does this not work as a notification LED?!

Our Andrew Romero pointed out just how good this would be. Having the LED customized to the app you got a notification from – reds and purple for Instagram, as one example – would be so good.

I see no reason why, with the right software, you couldn't have a few options. Say, light up "red" if my wife is messaging me somewhere (not just a phone call, but in any app). But also, say, light up "blue" if I get a Signal message. I mean obviously.

The Gemini notification is fine/cute – perhaps mirroring the 'Pixel Glow' strip that Google is trying to make happen on (the still poorly named) Googlebooks? It's probably a good thing to have if you're going to be talking to Gemini a lot and need to know it's active/listening.

Of course, the only time I would ever put my phone face down on a table is if I'm using a case (I worry less about scratches and more just the cleanliness of the surface for a device I'm going to touch so often throughout a day). And my "case" of choice is usually a MagSafe wallet which allows me to put the phone face-up (while making the phone actually stable with the ever-massive camera bump). And this obviously negates anything on the back of the phone.

Also, all of this with regard to notifications is what my Apple Watch is far better for anyway. So really this is just a feature for if you don't wear a smartwatch and often leave your phone face-down on a table. That's probably nice/useful but only if Google adds the obvious other notification integrations and why they're not launching with those is just dumbfounding.

But, to Schoon's point, Google often launches with features for Pixel devices which are half-baked at best. And as such, they usually vanish rather quickly.