Buds' Case & Fast Pair

Pixel Buds embrace the tether, using a beautiful yet durable fabric cord that seamlessly forms an adjustable ear loop. The charging case is designed to be something carried next to your clothing. It helps charge pixel buds 3 times to get upto 48hrs of music playblack and uses leds to showcase charge level. Buds' Case also add an extra level of ease by 'fast-pairing' to nearby device without digging into bluetooth settings.

Simple Flow with Complex Architecture

The idea to have a notification shows up on a phone as you open your case sounds simple. But when you are building a foundation for a feature that can be used by future products and on a gigantic platform like Android, things gets complicated.

The Intent!

UX wanted to acheive a quick draw of notification when the device is in close proximity. Team had to work with Bluetooth Eng to get the right RSSI range and connectivity statuses to ensure that the dialog doesnt pop on multiple devices.

Who draws the notification?

Pixel Buds is built on top of app-less model and is embedded into Assistant settings. As there is no specific app available to listen BLE intent, team had to figure another route and partner with Android Nearby team to transfer the pairing intent to Assistant. At the end it all looked seamless.

Mini display screen

Charging case has 3 LEDs to display number of states to the user which included use cases like pairing, charge level, error, OTA etc. Things that are not covered here are the hidden edge cases that the team had to design for. Well thats the story for another time!