Ideas for HiLight to make it more fun and useful
We've all seen how underutilized HiLight is on the new Pixel 11 Pro series. Right now, it only lights up for Gemini and calls from favorite contacts, and the only other use we've heard of is a future update enabling text messages from favorite contacts.
However, I think HiLight has the potential to be far more fun and useful. Here are a few ideas that I have:
Video/audio recording light. Any time microphone permission is used (as is done in most videos), display a red blinking light just like on dedicated cameras and audio recorders. Variation of Becca Farsace's idea in her Pixel 11 camera overview video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmdT12aICmo)
Charge status: When the phone is fully powered off, show a red light for charging and show a green light for fully charged. Basically similar to what many Android phones used to do back then.
Good ol' classic notification LED: just like the old days, when all phones had notification LEDs.
Third-party API: This has been reiterated before, but I just want to re-emphasize it here. I'd be very interested to see how different ends would utilize this.
Google (and third party apps) could also play with gradients, different blinking patterns, etc. for different use cases.