5 old Pixel features I’d like to see brought back

Switching back to a Pixel phone as my primary device for the first time since the Pixel 3 XL makes 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 think it stands up better to the competition from Samsung and Apple, even if the benchmarks disagree.

However, some changes are not for the better. There are software and hardware features from older Google phones that I miss and would like to see in future Pixels and Android releases.

From Android 6.0 Marshmallow to 9.0 Pie, Nexus and Pixel phones had access to the System UI Tuner, a hidden menu enabled by long-pressing the settings icon in the notification drop-down. It added some useful – albeit niche – quality of life features that made the phones more customizable. Some of those things, like a battery percentage in the status bar, were eventually added to Android itself, but other options weren’t so lucky and my favorites are gone. Using one of the menus in the System UI Tuner, you can customize your status bar by enabling or disabling items such as the volume profile, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and alarm icons. I hate how cluttered a status bar can be, so I deleted the items I didn’t need to see.

If any of this sounds familiar, that’s because Samsung still offers this functionality through the QuickStar module for Good Lock.

Notification dots appear on an app icon when there is a notification from that app in your notification panel. You may be wondering why I miss it if the dots haven’t disappeared. Although they still exist, they lack the functionality of older Android versions. When Notification Dots were first introduced, long pressing the app icon would preview the notification. Tapping the preview will open the notification, while swiping it away will open it. Unfortunately, Android 12 changed this behavior on Pixels, removing the preview completely. Now when you see a notification dot in an app, the only way you can interact with it is by swiping down the notification shade.

It doesn’t sound like a broken record, but Samsung’s One UI has retained all Notification Dots functionality, so this is a loss that’s fresher in my mind than it is for others.

Remember when you could squeeze your Pixel? That sounds absurd these days, but the Pixel 2, 3 and 4 all had a feature called Active Edge, which allowed the phones to detect when the bottom part of the device was squeezed. It was a gimmick to some, but it was the main way I started the Google Assistant, which at the time couldn’t be summoned by long-pressing the power button.

I’d like to see Active Edge return today, but only if Google opens it up so we can choose what it does. With Android 16, we can remap a power key with a double press to open Google Wallet instead of the camera, and while I love how quickly I can access my payment methods this way, I run into situations where I have to awkwardly open the camera app. If Active Edge came back and Google allowed users to choose what it did, you could quickly access both the camera and Google Wallet, or another app.

Photo Spheres were, as the name suggests, spherical photos that you could scroll through as if you were standing in the middle of the scene, made up of several individual images stitched together, and Google removed this feature along with the launch of the Pixel 8. Technically this was a Nexus phone feature that was also available on other Android phones and even iPhones via the Street View app, but this is my list and I want to add it!

Making a Photo Sphere can be a fiddly experience, and I have no doubt I looked like a real lemon when I made one at the top of Mt Snowdon, but they were fun to take and look at afterwards. The Photo Sphere would sometimes experience issues with cut legs or weird stitches, but keep in mind that Google launched the feature in 2012. Imagine what Photo Spheres would look like today if you could use the AI ​​editing in Google Photos to spice things up, especially with Magic Eraser removing unwanted objects.

Now feels like the perfect time for Photo Spheres yield. 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 check out Photo Spheres, especially if the feature were redesigned to take advantage of what modern smartphones can do.

The Pixel 4 was the first and only phone to launch with Project Soli, a radar module in the top edge of the Pixel 4 that enabled secure face unlock regardless of lighting and motion gestures, to control elements of the phone’s user interface. The gestures were good in theory, allowing a user to control media and disable timers and alarms with hand gestures, but in practice they barely worked and were missed when Soli was missing from next year’s Pixel 5.

The face unlock was great though. 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 one phone model: it deserved time to mature and improve. I’d like to know what would be possible today if Google had spent six years developing Soli instead of giving up on it.

With ten generations of Pixel and many more Nexus devices in its history, Google has a wealth of legacy software and hardware features that it could bring back in future releases. Is there an old Pixel feature you’d like to get back? Let us know.