This week’s Chroembook Pixel rumor was easily the most exciting story for any Chrome fan. The story behind the leak was also the fishiest we have seen in a while, leading many of us to believe it could have been a fake (albeit a very professional one). It only takes a bit of evidence to bring our hopes back up, though, and that is what we have for you today.
A few seconds of the video showed what might be the result of a project Google could have been working on for a while. A document from September describes a system for controlling lights in a Chrome OS device, even though no current device has anything that even closely ressembles said feature.
“At Startup or wake from sleep, Google colors cycle in.
While running, > 25% power level in the battery:
All blue, in a breathing effect (cycle up and down 30%).While running, <= 25% power level in battery: Same as above, but with red Shutting down, or going into sleep: Cycle out the Google colors (Note: the effect is only visible for S0->S3,
because shutting down kills power to the lightbar before we can react).While sleeping:
Similar to now, but only using Blue and red for battery indication as above.The EC doesn’t have access to the ALS, so we use the keyboard backlight to
control the lightbar brightness instead:If keyboard backlight is OFF (which it is when ambient is bright), use max
brightness for lightbar.If keyboard backlight is ON, use keyboard backlight brightness.”
The video “leaked” from the Slinky.me website displays a very short demonstration of such function at around 1 minute and 16 seconds into the video. Don’t hold your breath on it, but this could be a small sign of the Pixel’s existence. Let’s hope Google has something exciting to announce, because my eyes are just waiting to see (or not see, actually) all those 4 million pixels.
[Chromium via François Beaufort]