It is no longer a secret that Google is planning on announcing a few things on October 4. Google has now confirmed that to be the case and while not outright confirming that new smartphones will be unveiled, all the suggestions are there including the teasing of new phones during its confirmation of the October 4 event. Needless to say, these new phones will be the Pixel and the Pixel XL. A name change which comes in the face of moving away from the much-loved Nexus brand and much closer to the the Pixel brand of devices.
However, it also seems that along with the name change, these new Pixel devices will come sporting number of new additions. One of the most coveted is a tweaked version of the user experience in the form of the Pixel Launcher. In addition, it is also thought that the Pixel phones will come running on the next Android Nougat evolutionary step. Namely, Android 7.1 (Nougat). Now it seems that along with Android 7.1, a very useful and sought after feature will be coming to stock Android.
As you can see from the image below, the new feature is a restart option added to the power menu. So now you will be able to instantly reboot a device without needing to turn it off first, before turning it back on again. While the image below does technically represent an unconfirmed feature in an unconfirmed image of an unconfirmed phone, Android Police, who first published the image, does seem to be stating the new feature is authentic. However, there are two big caveats to that authentication. The first is that the software making use of this feature is thought to be pre-release. Which does mean that the feature might not actually make it into the final consumer version of Android 7.1. After all, it stands to reason as to why a development-focused version of the software would benefit from a feature which allows quick restarting of a device. The second big caveat, is that there is no information on whether this feature will be available on other devices that also inevitable get bumped up to Android 7.1 – or whether this will remain a Pixel feature only.