The Pixel 11 Pro's LED lights are a brilliant Android throwback

Last week, we got our first real look at one of the Pixel 11 Pro’s new features: Pixel Glow. We’ve been following behind-the-scenes developments around Pixel Glow, an array of color-changing lights embedded in Pixel 11 Pro’s camera bar, for months now.

Until Google shared an animation showing it off last Wednesday, we didn’t know what it’d actually look like. Thankfully, it seems like a thoughtful addition that’s tastefully executed. But it also feels distinctly like a modernization of an Android throwback: the humble notification LED.

Back before always-on displays were the norm, plenty of Android phones featured a color-changing LED light that could communicate basic information while your phone’s screen was off. Devices from LG, HTC, Samsung, and others had LEDs that lit up in different colors and sequences to denote notifications from different apps or contacts — and based on what we’ve seen so far, that’s about what Pixel Glow will do, too.

I’m not complaining, but I think it says something about the modern smartphone industry that one of the Pixel 11 Pro’s defining traits is a reimagining of a feature that was commonplace in the early 2010s.

Pixel Glow could be a great addition

Google’s not the first player in the contemporary smartphone space to put a modern spin on the notification LED. Nothing’s Glyph lights have been one of the brand’s defining characteristics ever since the Nothing Phone 1 launched in 2022. But where Nothing has presented a maximalist take on the concept, with showy arrays of multiple discrete LED strips and, later, dot-matrix displays embedded in the backs of its devices, Google’s interpretation seems more restrained.

From what we’ve seen so far, the feature we’re calling Pixel Glow is a small, circular area, nested where you’ll find the thermometer on the previous couple of Pro Pixel phones, possibly integrated into the camera flash. It looks like it’ll be able to show multiple colors at once, potentially allowing for dynamic patterns that, in theory, could alert you to any number of things happening when your phone is face down.

That’s in theory, at least. Code related to Pixel Glow refers to calls from favorite contacts, but it doesn’t explicitly spell out the kind of flexibility old-school notification LEDs allowed for — lighting up in user-specified colors to denote incoming notifications from different apps, for example. We’ve also seen evidence that Pixel Glow will be tightly integrated with Gemini, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the feature launch with limited, Google-approved use cases.

Still, I’m hopeful Pixel Glow will be as customizable as notification LEDs used to be — I’m always on the hunt for ways to spend less time looking at my phone’s screen.

What’s old is new again

The days when we could expect new phones to feel meaningfully more capable year over year are gone. The Pixel 11 series’s Tensor G6 chipset may actually make for a significant bump in horsepower, but it’s hard to tell what that would mean for users, practically speaking — the Pixel 10 and even the Pixel 9 still feel very snappy today. For some time now, it’s felt like the basic smartphone experience has peaked.

So it makes sense Google would be looking to differentiate the Pixel 11 series, its third consecutive smartphone generation to feature the hardware design language first introduced in 2024’s Pixel 9, in some other, visually obvious way. Taking inspiration from the phones of yesteryear is an interesting approach. Here’s hoping Pixel Glow doesn’t end up being glorified advertising for Gemini.

Pixel Glow has got me feeling cautiously optimistic: revisiting abandoned smartphone hardware conventions could be an interesting path forward for Google. Could we see a future Pixel 12 with a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, or a Pixel 13 with expandable storage? Probably not, but it’s encouraging to see the company trying something unusual in the current landscape, even if it is borrowing older ideas to do it.