Fast Pair has expanded from Bluetooth headphones to include smartwatches and Matter smart home appliances since its debut. The stylus is the next category of devices from Fast Pair before the Pixel Tablet.
Regarding APK Insight: We’ve decompiled the most recent version of an app that Google put on the Play Store in our “APK Insight” post. These files, known as APKs for Android apps, can be disassembled to reveal several lines of code that allude to potential future features. Please remember that Google may or may not ever ship these functionalities and that our interpretation may need to be revised. We’ll enable those closer to being finalized to give you an idea of how they will seem if they do ship. Read on with that in mind.
The Pixel Tablet will support USI styluses, and this week’s Android 13 QPR2 Beta 2 update added information about stylus charging notifications.
Three new “fast pair stylus” strings have been added to Google Play services (for Wear OS, version 23.02.13) to provide low-battery notifications comparable to Bluetooth headphones.
- <string name=”fast_pair_stylus_battery_getting_low_description”>Battery getting low \u2022 Consider charging soon</string>
- <string name=”fast_pair_stylus_low_battery_description”>Low battery \u2022 Charge soon</string>
- <string name=”fast_pair_stylus_very_low_battery_description”>Very low battery \u2022 Charge now</string>
Google’s decision to employ the well-known Fast Pair battery alerts for styluses makes sense.
A generic “bt stylus” icon was also included in a recent update to the Settings Services app, which controls the Battery widget on the Pixel. Nothing more concrete has been stated, but it makes sense for the Battery widget to display the stylus’s current %.
To provide a fantastic end-to-end experience, Google will create a first-party Pixel stylus, pen, or pencil for its future tablet. How a potential stylus would charge is still unknown. Having a USB-C port on the pen would be quite clunky, so wireless is the way to go.
Unlike the iPad Pro, the Pixel Tablet does not have a clear charging surface on the side corners. A highly speculative possibility is that the thicker screen bezel conceals a charger because using the rear pins for the Charging Speaker Dock would be physically difficult and cause a tilt when attached.
