Google’s Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are in the process of becoming the most leaked smartphone of 2018. So many leaks have surfaced regarding the phone’s features that it’s doubtful if there’s any surprise left for us on its launch on 9th October. In the past few weeks, a number of leaked pictures of the two phones have given us every detail about the hardware and the software to expect.
However, nothing extremely startling has yet been encountered for the Pixel 3 and 3XL, which are expected to run on Android 9.0 Pie which supported the earlier Pixel 2 and 2 XL devices too. One such feature would be swiping the home screen button to bring all the recent apps with quick access to a few applications at the bottom, too, alongside a second swipe getting you to the app drawer.
New leaks which have been detected in the past 24 hours or more show some standard Android navigation gestures like the common swiping down the top to get the notification bar where you can interact with notifications and other similar Android Oreo builds.
To add, there is this Active Edge feature where you can “squeeze” the sides of the device to trigger specific actions, and the promo videos show the “squeeze” to trigger Google Assistant in the Pixel 3. Also, the “tap to wake” feature is double pressing your power button to open the camera. You also get the ability to swipe down the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner to drop down the notifications. Pressing the power button will take screenshots and give you the option to reboot the device.
A recently released Unpacking video by Ishan Agarwal shows off Google’s new “Pixel tips” application, which is basically Google’s way of helping users know their smartphone’s basic functions. Several tips, including shortcuts for opening the camera, using Google Duo, and pulling down the notification shade by dragging the fingerprint scanner, are discussed in the app.
The video also shows how the device can recognize the name of a restaurant mentioned in an email or how the camera viewfinder is able to scan someone’s email address right from the business card. This is where Google Lens comes into play, a feature that will help this single-camera setup fight in the arena with all multi-lens photographic abilities of other phones by automatically processing the images and identifying buildings, plants, and animals or text and providing additional information or extracting data for use in other apps.
There is also supposed to be an “Always on” mode within the default camera setup. Therefore, the user doesn’t have to manually activate Google Lens. It’s true that Google Lens doesn’t improve the picture quality, but it understands the configuration of the captured scene and computer camera setting for the best result.
Apart from the prices of Google Pixel 3 and 3XL, I doubt there’s hardly any information on the phone that we’re left to figure out. However, Google’s launch is just in the next 11 days, so let’s wait and see if the company can surprise us with anything now.
