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
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