Made By Google 2026 Live Updates: Pixel 11 Series, HiLight, Tag, Watch 5 and More

Screenshot by Patrick Holland/CNET

Google has revealed the Pixel 11 Pro, and this isn’t a leak. In what’s just a good ol’-fashioned tease, the company released a 15-second video showing a pair of Pixel 11 Pro phones slowly rotating out of darkness into light.

A movie trailer voice says, “On a scale of 1 to 10, meet… well, you get it.”

Screenshot by Patrick Holland/CNET

You don’t need to wait until the Made by Google event on Wednesday evening. Google shared a 20-second video of the unannounced and unreleased Pixel Watch 5 on its Made by Google YouTube channel.

In terms of details, not much is revealed. But we do get to see the Pixel Watch’s recognizable circular display while a deep, manly voice says, “Imagine a watch that tracks your health, sleep and fitness but still has the decency to still look like a watch.” Nice little jab at Samsung and Apple and their watches that have squircle and square shapes that don’t really look much like a wrist watch.
Take a look:

We’ve more or less known about the existence of Google’s Pixel Watch 5 for a few months now, but that confirmation came from an unlikely source. Randy Pitchford, the co-founder of Gearbox Software, creator of the Borderlands video game series and a terminally online social media user, made an X post about the device in May.

Pitchford posted several pictures of a Pixel Watch 5 that his friend supposedly found “when he was scuba diving near the island of St. Martin.” He asked if anyone could help him return the unreleased watch, and later confirmed that he was put in contact with the original owner.

This wouldn’t be the first time a Google product was found in a public place and leaked ahead of its official announcement – the same thing happened this time last year – but it might just be the first time that a leak came from the ocean. Here’s hoping that the Pixel Watch 5’s owner didn’t get in too much trouble after that incident.

Among the devices we’re expecting at the Made by Google Event is the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, the company’s fourth foldable. But while last year’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold landed among other conventional folding handsets – clamshell flip phones and tall book-style foldables – this year’s landscape is different thanks to Google’s biggest mobile rivals.

Last month, Samsung unveiled both the clamshell Galaxy Z Flip 8 and the book-style Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra – a new nomenclature to distinguish it from the squatter, wider and completely new Galaxy Z Fold 8. The latter was a delight, which CNET Senior Writer Abrar Al-Heeti found “a satisfyingly compact yet versatile foldable phone that’s great for endless scrolling, binge watching and web surfing.” It shares the passport-shaped format with the original Google Pixel Fold released in 2023, and that more compact, pocketable shape could provide fierce competition with Google’s upcoming foldable.

More troubles lie ahead for Google. Apple’s long-awaited iPhone Fold, possibly called the Ultra, is heavily rumored to launch alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models in September. Like Samsung’s new foldable, the folding iPhone is expected to be book-style in the passport shape. Google’s foldable could face competition from both the Apple brand and a new format.

The Pixel 11’s starting price might be going up, but does that mean every tech spec on the lowest-priced model is getting an upgrade? Maybe not, according to information posted by insider Mystic Leaks.

The base Pixel 11 might only have 8GB of RAM, according to Mystic Leaks – a number that stands in stark contrast with the 12GB previously seen in leaked Amazon listings for the phone. It’s possible that a base model Pixel 11 with 12GB of memory was planned but shelved, thanks to RAMageddon increasing prices across the board, but we won’t know for sure until the official Google announcement.

Not everything is bad news, however: The higher starting price for the Pixel 11 may be partially attributed to the fact that the lowest model will have double the storage capacity of its predecessor. Multiple reports point toward Google dropping the 128GB models and starting every Pixel 11 with 256GB of storage.

As phone manufacturers grapple with rising hardware costs – and pass them onto us – we should take whatever win we can get.

Rejoice, all ye who are klutzy, clumsy or otherwise absent-minded. If you buy into Google’s product ecosystem, there may soon be a way for you to track any items you accidentally leave behind.

One of the more interesting rumors surrounding the Pixel 11 hype cycle is that Google may introduce its first Pixel Tag, a direct answer to the Apple AirTag. According to 9to5Google, the Pixel Tag could be pill-shaped rather than round – though its functionality seems to match that of other smart trackers.

The Pixel Tag will reportedly be integrated into Google’s Find Hub for Android phones, as additional functionality gets built out for that service. According to leaked marketing details, we know the Pixel Tag will have a speaker for easy luggage searches – but we don’t yet have the finer details about its battery or technical specifications.

 If the rumors are to be believed, Google’s Pixel 11 phone is going to ship a few new pastel variants. The color choices for the Pixel 11 models will likely be divided between serious, professional colors and fun, bright hues, just like we saw in the Pixel 10 lineup.

The Pixel 11 leaks indicate that the black and green color choices from its predecessor will return alongside a steely gray model. Most interestingly, it’s looking like the Pixel 11 is going to be pretty in pink – how’s that for an eye-popping color?

Google isn’t the first company to add fun new colors to its lineup. The iPhone 17 is available in green and purple, while the iPhone 17 Pro has a bright orange model. The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra keeps things low-key by comparison, but even that phone comes in a warm rose gold shade.

Mobile phone manufacturers will always compete over who has the better hardware – but it looks like the battle over who builds the flashiest phone has only just begun.

Google wowed CNET’s reviewers and photographers last year with the Pixel 10 lineup. While we’ve tested the Pixel’s camera against other Android phones, I recently pitted Apple’s iPhone and the Pixel against each other to judge another photography-adjacent feature: AI photo-editing tools.

Photo editing has become one of the biggest areas where phone-makers are integrating generative AI. But, like any AI, the results can be hit or miss. You can check out my full testing here, including an instance where the Pixel passes my hardest test for AI.

I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if we see more AI tools added to the Pixel 11, inside Google Photos and elsewhere. But I hope Google shows some restraint. The Pixel 10 has as many useless AI image tools as it does useful ones.

Android phones have had dedicated notification LEDs for years. I fondly remember Sony having one on its Xperia phones (no longer a feature on newer models). But in 2026, I see phone-makers embracing a new wave of notification LEDs. The headline feature on Nothing phones has been its Glyph lights on the back that can light up to alert you about incoming messages. The BlackBerry-inspired Click Communicator phone, due out later this year, has a Signal LED on the side that is customizable and can light up in different colors so you know if you have a message from your wife (blue color) or your boss (red color).

And now Google is rumored to add its 2026 take to the Pixel 11 series with a light on the camera bar that does something similar. Initially thought to be nicknamed Glow, a leaked French marketing image posted on Bluesky user Roland Quant shows the feature’s name to be HiLight. The screenshot above was taken from a teaser video that Google released for the Pixel 11 Pro on its YouTube channel. Guess this means no more Pixel thermometer?!