Verizon Leaks Early Pics Of Google’s Pixel Smartphone

Only hours away from Google’s highly anticipated live hardware unveiling event, Verizon and a few other key people did the unthinkable: they leaked pictures of Google’s new smartphone online.

Media embargoes and non-disclosure agreements can be tricky things. Violating the agreement not to divulge information before the appointed time can result in everything from a strongly worded reprimand in an email, to a full-on lawsuit due to the impact on the company’s stock value. At the same time, some of these agreements come with a “wink, wink” approach, as in leaking the information could just produce more buzz around it and more free publicity (as in, this very article).

This error seems to be on the innocuous side of flubs. A Canadian website, a British website, and ultimately Verizon all posted pictures and pre-order pages to the sites ahead of the October 3rd big reveal in San Francisco. Given the fact that news outlets have already been telling consumers for weeks that Google will be introducing the Pixel and Pixel XL at the event–along with a new wifi router and the Google Home rival to Amazon’s Echo–it’s probably not the end of the world that the pictures went up a little sooner rather than later.

However, an article from Gizmodo points out that Verizon went a little farther than just putting the pre-order page up on its site. It went on to list a new feature from Google, mysteriously dubbed Google Magic, that will be incorporated in the phone:

“So what is Google Magic? Probably software? Or maybe just some marketing shenanigans? Siri’s evil, yet more powerful twin? A colleague of mine speculates it’s probably exclusive Pixel software that has gesture features. “Magic” feels like an uncreative name for powerful software to me, so it better be really damn magical.”

Like the rest of the world, we’ll just have to wait for the unveiling to find out what Magic really does.