Most of my friends and family are ‘phone users of fortune’, drifting between iPhones and Android phones each time they buy a new smartphone; others are iOS loyalists who wouldn’t even consider going Android. I’m the opposite, and ever since I got my first smartphone (a hand-me-down Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini) I’ve stick firmly to Android.
There’ve been myriad reasons for this, mainly due to Android’s value for money, my desire for a phone with a good battery life and me simply not liking how iPhones look, but that’s all a story for another day.
Despite me generally preferring Android to iOS it’s not the perfect operating system, and there are a few features I’d really like the software to gain. Some of these are iOS ones that I think Android could use, others are brand-new ones, and a select one or two are features that Android used to have but were lost for whatever reason.
More, perhaps the majority of them, are actually features that certain Android phones already have. That’s because they’re features not native to Android, but introduced by certain manufacturers who create their own forks of the operating system.
So here are six Android innovations that I need to see.
A better way of sorting home page icons
I have to download countless apps for work, and organizing them on my home page is an excruciating business.
I’m sure most Android fans can relate to this: you press and hold an app icon to ‘pick it up’, and hover it over the folder you want it to go into. However, when you let go it doesn’t go in the folder, but instead now sits in its space, and has bumped all subsequent apps along one. I’ve done this countless times and I’ve recently let my phone’s home page become an absolute mess for fear of how infuriating organizing app icons is.
There’s got to be a better way. With ‘customization’ the name of the game for Android phones, I’m desperately waiting for Google to introduce a better way of designing and organizing the Android home screen, which doesn’t involve me manually parsing through all my apps and throwing them about.
Maybe this could involve an auto-app-sort feature that suggests pairings and folders for you. Maybe a bespoke option in the settings app to let you quickly design your home page in an interface where clicking on the app won’t open it. Perhaps Google could add a browser-based sorting system so I could jump onto my computer and do the design work with the benefit of my mouse and a big screen.
This could be implemented in loads of ways, and I’d happily put in some time now to avoid wasting loads of time with fiddly organization later down the line.
True customizable font
In the messy but fun old-school days of Android, before everything had to be over-designed to a tee, you used to be able to choose some pretty whacky fonts — I remember using a ridiculous handwriting-style serif font on my S3 Mini that, in hindsight, looked really ugly. But as I said before customization has always been a core part of Android and that should extend to fonts.
Nowadays, you’re lucky if you get to pick your phone font, and luckier if you can find how in the settings. The Realme phone I currently use comes with three fonts you can choose (all very similar ones) and has a decent few more you can download online, but that’s it. Sure, you can download sketchy third-party apps to fiddle with the fabric of your phone but I’d prefer to do it natively.
I’m quite picky about my fonts. On my computer I’ve got a ‘house style’ folder of the chosen fonts I like to use for all my creative projects, and I’m picky about my Garamond vs Georgia or my Adagio Sans vs Ariel. And some phones I’ve tested in the past haven’t let me change font, or only between two options.
I’d love to see Android introduce a way to import .ttf files (that’s the file format fonts come in) yourself onto phones, so you can pick whatever font you want, or even introduce a way to download them straight onto your phone. This would let Android users customize their mobile to a greater extent, and also support custom font creators who charge for their typefaces.
Improved PC integration
The way you use an Android phone alongside a Windows PC has improved in recent years, but it’s still pretty horrendous.
Windows PCs have an app called Phone Link that you can use to control your Android phone on your PC, but I’ve found it reliably unreliable. It’s slow to update or use, you can’t copy and paste from your computer to your phone, and you’re constantly required to press prompts on your phone… which spoils the whole point of doing this task in the first place if I could readily be using my phone instead.
It’s a shame because there are a few features that, in theory, would be really handy if Phone Link worked well. I’d love to be able to use phone messaging apps while also communicating on my computer’s, or bring up a mobile idle game on a side screen while I’m working.
In the last two sections I harped on about how Android phones’ biggest selling point was customization. Nowadays, it feels like that nebulous word ‘productivity’ is a bigger selling point, but to get there I feel improved PC integration is needed on Android phones.
A Zen Space equivalent
Now this is definitely something you can already get on some Android phones. Apple‘s introduction of Focus Mode to iOS got Android fans clamoring for a similar feature, which would temporarily reduce or hide notifications to let you focus on a simple task (ie, your job or studies).
OnePlus phone owners can already do this, with Zen Mode being an important selling point of the mobiles. I’ve used it, and it’s pretty good and transforming your mobile into a brick that can’t play games or text people so you can get to a job at hand.
But not everyone owns a OnePlus phone, and Focus Mode shows that this feature doesn’t just have a niche interest group any more. Everyone wants a way to temporarily turn their phone’s back to the world, cut out notifications and texts, and digitally detox for a while.
This feels like a feature that would be very easy for Google to implement across all Android phones: it’s basically an advanced ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode with a few bells attached. In fact, if we don’t see something like this come to the stock Android experience, I’d guess it’s only because Google doesn’t want to be seen to copy Apple too closely.
Changes to charging
An early version of this list had me asking for a smart charging feature across Android, which would let you pick when you wanted your phone to reach 100% so you could plug in your phone overnight without worrying about overcharging. Some handsets have this, like Sony Xperias, but since it’s a hardware feature as well as a software one it doesn’t feel right for this list.
But there are still other things that Android could do to improve charging and battery health, two of the most important features for a phone to last a long time.
At the moment, few Android phones give any kind of prediction as to when your handset will be fully charged at its current charging rate, and this would help people remember to unplug their phones when it’s powered up. Likewise some kind of full-charge reminder or alert would be useful; after all, overcharging can affect how well a phone’s battery could lose charge.
I’d also like to see other battery health reminders, perhaps with suggestions on different ways to use your phone or settings to tweak to improve how long your current charge lasts and how long your battery maintains its overall health.
I know loads of people who don’t know the first thing about keeping their smartphone’s battery healthy, which shows that Android (and iOS, for that matter, despite attempts in the area) hasn’t done a good job with its battery and charging features, or in educating people about them.
An actual rival to Shortcuts
As you can tell I’m not an iOS fan and that’s not going to change (despite the tablet I own being an iPad) but one feature that Android needs to steal is iOS Shortcuts.
I know, I know, some are jostling to let me know that Android does currently have something like this. Android Routines let you carry out certain chains of actions upon the select trigger, however there aren’t actually that many actions available and the actual triggers are pretty useless, they rely on the Google Assistant and upon getting to a certain location or at a certain time. Mostly, it feels like Routines are a smart home feature rather than an Android one.
That’s not enough for Google Routines to rival Shortcuts, and Android will need to redesign the system from the ground up if it wants to do so.
I’d love to see, like on iOS, buttons to trigger Routines from my Android home screen; maybe I can press a ‘Gaming time’ button for the phone to minimize background apps, enable RAM boost and reduce the home screen apps to a select list of my games. Or how about a ‘Fitness more’ icon that automatically starts tracking me on a fitness app of choice while starting a select Spotify playlist and opening Google Maps so I can choose my route.
Shortcuts mode gives you almost this versatility as you can create strings of actions upon a button being pressed, and while it too falls a little short of what I’d like, it’s far better than Routines.
