C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
Compared to the barebones Nexus phones of Google’s past, the Pixel series has a lot of great features that make using a Google phone unlike any other smartphone. Whether it’s Call Screening or Now Playing, there’s a lot to love about the Pixel experience, and I’m glad that I returned to it after a long break. But as much as I love my Pixel 10 Pro, there are things I’d like Google to borrow from other manufacturers. From Apple to OnePlus, these are the seven things I want to become a part of the Pixel.
What feature from another brand do you want on your Pixel? 35 votes Individual app volume 20 % Photographic Styles 9 % Widget Stacks 14 % Media controls in Live Updates 14 % A routines app 11 % Pop-up windows 17 % Motion gestures 14 % Other (leave a comment) 0 %
Better volume control
Lil Katz / Android Authority
One of my bugbears is when a game or Instagram reel interrupts my music with a loud, annoying sound. Aside from being miffed that my music has suddenly stopped, as someone on the spectrum, I also detest unexpectedly loud noises. A lot of Android skins like Samsung’s One UI, OnePlus’s OxygenOS, and Motorola’s Hello UI have individual app volumes. It’s a feature that provides granular control of volume on a per-app level, so you can silence Instagram or any game that has ads that you can’t mute and leave your music playing.
Another sound-related feature I miss from Samsung and Motorola is using the volume buttons to control media playback. In One UI and Hello UI, holding down a volume key when the screen is on will adjust the volume as normal, but doing so when the screen is off will skip to the next or previous track. I find this particularly useful in the colder weather, where I tend to wear gloves, which makes using the touchscreen or the gestures on my earbuds difficult, but holding down a button is relatively easy. I shouldn’t need a third-party app to do this on my Pixel.
Photographic Styles
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
Toward the end of 2024, I used an iPhone 16 Pro for a few months, and one of the things I loved the most was Photographic Styles. Unlike a filter that you can add to a photo and tweak after taking it, Photographic Styles can be set as the default so that they apply to every image you take. You’re not stuck with them, though, as you can go into the editor after the photo has been taken to tweak the style, remove it, or swap it for another one.
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