Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Android phones have come a long, long way. From the era of clunky, half-baked doohickeys to fine artifacts that demonstrate human proficiency and imagination, the journey of our digital accomplices hasn’t been less than inspiring. And over these years, Android devices have picked up several excellent features that now feel so familiar and ubiquitous that even Apple has had to adopt them on the iPhone.
Many of these features originated as musings of indie developers but have now gained enough popularity to be incorporated into Android. To commemorate them, we’re highlighting eight such features, even though we could make a much longer list.
Which of these Android features did you use before they became mainstream? 93 votes Always On Display 26 % File managers 26 % System-wide theming 12 % Gesture navigation 4 % Blue light filters 9 % Advanced screenshot features 2 % Homescreen customization 17 % Quick Share 3 % Anything else (comment below) 1 %
Always-On Display Always-on displays, or AODs, are so well integrated into Android phones that they seem an indispensable part of the experience. So, when Apple finally added support for AOD on iPhone a few years ago, I was among the people clamoring that the idea was being stolen from Android. What an irony, though, it seems now, with Android brands aping Apple’s battery-hungry AOD while the lockscreen still peeks through.
Nonetheless, while the surge in AOD followed the adoption of more AMOLEDs on Android devices, there was a time when the feature wasn’t natively available. When LCDs were still the popular form of display, even on flagships, Android users had to rely on third-party apps to get a similar functionality.
I used and vehemently attested for AcDisplay because it added a faux always-on display featuring a dark gray background with monochrome icons on my now-deceased Google Nexus 4. The screen lit up every time a new notification arrived, allowing me to stay on top of things, which was fun back when I didn’t have an overwhelming deluge of notifications — or a chronic attention deficit.
Of course, this would chew through the battery much faster, but a simple fix to that problem was to turn off 3G to gain a few more hours without being smothered by FOMO (the fear of missing out).
Thankfully, manufacturers such as LG and Samsung didn’t take too long to figure out how to implement always-on displays on AMOLED screens — and eager brands such as Xiaomi and OnePlus soon followed. Nokia had already accomplished it with phones like the N8 many years ago, so it shouldn’t have been difficult. Simultaneously, we grew more conscious about security and hiding our notifications from the lock screen, leading to the end of apps such as AcDisplay.
File managers
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