Switching back to a Pixel phone as my primary device for the first time since the Pixel 3 XL has made me realize how much Google’s flagship phones have changed. Compared to its predecessors, the Pixel 10 Pro is better made, the software is more reliable, and I feel that it better contends with the competition from Samsung and Apple, even if benchmarks don’t agree. Some changes aren’t for the better, though. There are software and hardware features from older Google phones that I miss and would love to see return in future Pixels and Android releases. What Pixel feature from the past would you like to return? 92 votes System UI Tuner 23 % Notification dots 11 % Photo Sphere 21 % Active Edge 18 % Soli 22 % Something else (comment) 5 % System UI Tuner From Android 6.0 Marshmallow to 9.0 Pie, Nexus and Pixel phones could access the System UI Tuner, a hidden menu that was enabled by long-pressing the settings icon in the notification pull-down. It added some useful — if niche — quality-of-life features that made the phones more customisable. Some of those things, like a battery percentage in the status bar, eventually got added into Android itself, but other options weren’t so lucky, and my favorites are gone. One of the menus in the System UI Tuner allowed you to customize your status bar by toggling items like the volume profile, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and alarm icons on or off. I hate how cluttered a status bar can be, so I removed the items I didn’t need to see. If any of those things sound familiar, it’s because Samsung still offers this functionality through its QuickStar module for Good Lock. Notification dots Notification Dots appear on an app icon when there is a notification from that app in your notification shade. You might wonder why I miss it when dots haven’t gone away. Well, while they do still exist, functionality from older Android versions is missing. When Notification Dots were first introduced, long-pressing the app icon would show a preview of the notification. Tapping the preview would open the notification, while swiping it away would dismiss it. Unfortunately, Android 12 changed this behavior on Pixels, removing the preview entirely. Now, when you see a Notification Dot on an app, the only way to interact with it is by swiping down the notification shade. Not to sound like a broken record, but Samsung’s One UI has retained all of the functionality for Notification Dots, so this is a loss that’s fresher in my mind than it might be for others. Active Edge Hadlee Simons / Android Authority Do you remember when you could squeeze your Pixel? That sounds absurd today, but the Pixel 2, 3, and 4 all had a feature called Active Edge, which allowed the phones to detect when the lower portion of the device was being squeezed. It was a gimmick to some, but it was the primary way I launched Google Assistant, which couldn’t be summoned by long-pressing the power button at the time. Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority? Set us as a favorite source in Google Discover to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. You can also set us as a preferred source in Google Search by clicking the button below. I’d love to see Active Edge return today, but only if Google opened it up so that we could choose what it does. Android 16 lets us remap a power key double-press to open Google Wallet instead of the camera, and while I love how fast I can access my payment methods like this, it leaves me in situations where I fumble to open the camera app. If Active Edge were brought back and Google allowed users to choose what it did, then you could have quick access to both the camera and Google Wallet, or any other app. Photo Spheres Hadlee Simons / Android Authority Photo Spheres, as the name suggests, were spherical photos you could scroll around as if you were standing in the middle of the scene, made up of several individual images stitched together, and Google removed the feature alongside the launch of the Pixel 8. Technically, this was a Nexus phone feature that also came to other Android phones and even iPhones through the Street View app, but this is my list, and I want to include it! Taking a Photo Sphere could be a clumsy experience, and I have no doubt I looked like a right lemon when I took one at the top of Mt Snowdon, but they were fun to take and look at afterward. The Photo Sphere would encounter issues with cut-off legs or weird stitches at times, but keep in mind that Google launched the feature in 2012. Imagine what Photo Spheres would look like today if you could leverage the AI editing in Google Photos to neaten things up, especially with Magic Eraser removing unwanted objects. Now feels like the perfect time for Photo Spheres to return. One of the best ways to view a Photo Sphere was with a Google Cardboard or Daydream headset. Google is gearing up to launch its Android XR platform, and a new VR headset would be the perfect place to view Photo Spheres, especially if the feature were reengineered to take advantage of what modern smartphones can do. Project Soli The Pixel 4 was the first and only phone to launch with Project Soli, a radar module in the top bezel of the Pixel 4 that allowed for secure face unlock regardless of lighting and motion gestures to control elements of the phone’s UI. The gestures were good in theory, allowing a user to control media and dismiss timers and alarms with waves of the hand, but in practice, they barely worked and weren’t missed when Soli was missing from the following year’s Pixel 5. The face unlock, though, was great. It was fast, even in the dark, and still feels better than the camera-based face unlock on my Pixel 10 Pro. Soli deserved inclusion in more than a single model of phone — it deserved time to mature and improve. I’d love to know what would be possible today if Google had developed Soli for six years instead of abandoning it. With ten generations of Pixel and plenty more Nexus devices in its history, Google has a deep pool of old software and hardware features it could bring back in future releases. Is there an old Pixel feature you wish you could get back? Let us know. Follow