Google’s first in-house family of devices, the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL, introduced a number of firsts for the company. The Google Pixel duo were the first smartphones to launch based around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset. The devices are very similar in terms of specification but the smaller, Google Pixel uses a 1080p 5.0-inch AMOLED panel whereas the larger Google Pixel XL uses a 1440p (or QHD resolution) 5.5-inch AMOLED panel. The larger device also has a larger battery but both have the same amount of RAM and are available in either 32 GB or 128 GB internal storage capacities.
Although both devices are built by HTC and there may have been some cooperation with HTC during the design part of the Google Pixel devices, you will not find an HTC logo on the back of the devices. Both smartphones come with features such as unlimited full quality cloud-based picture storage, all the better to utilize the smartphone’s best-in-class camera. And both run Android 7.1, which is based upon Google’s interpretation of how Android should look and feel. This includes the Pixel Launcher, which is only officially available for the Google Pixel family of devices.
The Google Pixel launcher comes with circular icons and a redesigned application draw and at the top shows the time and weather icons, in common with many other third party widgets. However, one detail from the Pixel Launcher is that the weather icon continued to show the “sun” symbol to illustrate a clear sky… even at night. This is one of those little details that’s impossible to ignore once it has been pointed out. However, Google now appear to have released an update to the Google Pixel launcher or at least the underlying Google Now technology that changes the sun symbol to the moon symbol. This change is independent from any update to either the Google Pixel’s software or launcher and so therefore must me driven by the Google server side of things. To date, only a number of users are reporting the chance to their Google Pixel: it would appear that Google are rolling out the improvement in stages rather than turning it on for all customers.