One of Google’s weirdest Pixel features is finally dead

Weird hardware still matters. One of Google’s weirdest Pixel features is finally dead, and I’m going to seriously miss it. It felt like a strange, pandemic-era feature that arrived two years too late, squeezed into the phone for no reason other than “why not.” Now, with the Pixel 11 series, Google has quietly killed the temperature sensor, dropping it from its flagship hardware.

Replacing it is Google’s new HiLight notification light, which someone might call equally gimmicky in implementation. It is easy to dismiss a smartphone thermometer as a useless gimmick. The space could have been better used for an IR blaster, a larger camera sensor, or even a bigger battery.

But as someone who inadvertently ended up using it far more than I expected, I’m surprised to say I’m genuinely sad to see it go. The Pixel thermometer was strange, for sure, but it was also one of the few recent phone features that solved real everyday problems in a way that software never can.