🌞 Good morning! Back on deck to finish the week!

We all love a good leak and exclusive reports backed by anonymous sources. The best leakers stitch together a track record over time, and balance early leaks and reports with close-to-launch real data and information. It’s a balance of reporting and, at times, showmanship, as it’s fun to be a tech influencer, basically. 

With all that in mind, some Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro design renders have hit the tech world, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. But having said that, let’s take a look at what we have via Jon Prosser, who has a mixed record for Google leaks:

• What we see here are some nice-looking renders, with triple-tone designs, most notably an odd black glass camera bump that is a little bit like a visor, running from edge-to-edge on the back. 
• Then above and below the bump are color schemes with the glass itself — orange at the top, then a sort of lighter orange at the bottom. We also see a different model that swaps out that lighter orange for white.
• The key difference between the apparent Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro is a dual-lens for the 6 vs a triple-lens on the Pro, which would be a first for a Pixel phone.
• We would expect Google to up its camera capabilities for new 2021 devices, having extracted the maximum out of its Pixel hardware that it has kept static for years now. Going to a three-lens system makes sense.
• The front of the phone looks about as expected, though it differs from the current Pixel look by moving the punch-hole to the center.
• An under-display fingerprint sensor would also be a shift from the Google design language which has stuck to a dedicated spot on the back of the phone.
• And this is saying nothing about the Pixel Watch rendered in the images too, which is still an unknown.

All in all:

• It’s possible some of these features are accurate. It’s possible the final design looks nothing like this. 
• What is encouraging is that other leakers, including Max Weinbach, have chimed in to suggest that while colors and styling may not match, the renders match expectations.
• Google, often via its Made By Google Twitter account, has been relatively quick to confirm bits of information in the past when they accurately leak. Nothing official has been released yet.
• Final thing: Prosser suggested he has more detail to come.

💸 Google fined $123 million in Italy for abusing Android Auto dominance (Android Authority).

⚡ Motorola and GuRu team-up to bring over-the-air wireless power to smartphones, though no mention of timeframes… (Android Authority).

🔑 Apple AirTag review: Finding your lost keys has never been this easy (Android Authority).

🎱 ICYMI: The Zenfone 8 series launched with the Zenfone 8 and Zenfone 8 Flip. The flagship is actually not the Flip version, making the cheaper device unusually better (Android Authority).

🍎 Maybe it’s time for a HomePod fire sale, Apple? (The Verge).

👉 Lenovo’s new “Go” brand of travel gear kicks off with a wireless-charging mouse (Ars Technica).

🎧 Amazon’s new Echo Buds are “annoyingly good” for the price, even if you don’t at all embrace Alexa (Gizmodo).

⛓ Elon Musk decries bitcoin’s ‘insane’ energy use after Tesla payment U-turn (Reuters).

😬 Also: Tesla owner who “drives” from back seat got arrested, and his Tesla impounded. So, he bought another Tesla and then did it again (Ars Technica).

🔒 Fascinating: Colonial Pipeline paid the DarkSide hackers 75 Bitcoin or nearly $5 million in ransom almost immediately, but the provided decryption tool was so slow that the company had to use backups (Bloomberg).

🎮 “The PlayStation 5 is starting to look like the revolution it promised” (Wired).

🌭 A boring dystopia: “Get ready for in-car ads” (Gizmodo).

🚀 SpaceX charts a path for Starship’s first 90-minute orbital test flight (Engadget).

🔴 China’s Tianwen-1 mission will attempt a Mars rover landing today — reports suggest a 3:11 pm ET landing (CNET).

🗺️ “What is the thing that surprised you the most when you traveled to a country you had never been to before?” (r/askreddit)

Someone made an interactive model of all active satellites in orbit based on NORAD data (r/dataisbeautiful):

The gif does very little justice to the whole thing — I strongly recommend you click the link to view more

The author also posted some helpful FAQ info:

• The slow-moving ring to the edge of this gif is made up of geosynchronous satellites put into stable orbit to stay fixed relative to the earth’s surface for communications over dedicated regions, rather than orbiting around the earth. For example, GPS, TV broadcasting, and weather satellites.
• In this projection, each satellite is a 3×3 pixel. In the real world, they’re about the size of a small car, and they orbit in three dimensions, meaning gaps of kilometers both across and at different elevations. The satellites are nowhere near as congested as it appears. Collisions do happen, though!

Have a great one!

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.