What are some cool but underrated Android Features on Android that most people don’t know about? those little things that make life easier but don’t get talked about much. I feel like there’s so much hidden stuff in Android that we miss out on.
Android has support for keyboards. Both USB and Bluetooth keyboards work well and can be used for longer typing.
And a mouse too!
Not sure if this counts as “underrated” but Quick Share / Nearby Share. Its just Airdrop but for Android, not much to explain. It’s built in to all modern Android versions, and some older devices might also have it if they are new enough to have the “Google Play System Update” option on their phone as a separate update option from the main OS update.
Edit: Actually, its reportedly available for every android phone with Android Version 6.0 or newer.
These might be Pixel only features, but the few that always get iPhone users envious of my phone are:
Battery sharing - Turning the phone into a wireless charger for other phones, including iPhones.
Now Playing - Display whatever music is playing on the lock screen, and keep a history. Great when you’re at a bar and don’t want to open up Shazam or want to go back and see all the music your friend was playing in the car.
Ad Guard - Block ads, even in apps.
If you have a USB C to C cable handy, that’s also going to work to charge other devices, loses less power to the transfer, is quicker, and also more convenient since you can keep using both phones. Of course you’ll often not have a cable, but if you do it’s probably gonna be the better option
The real advantage to the battery share feature (ime) is charging shit like my pixel buds while I also charge my phone, using 1 cable
An application like tasker makes you realise the weird and amazing stuff you can do.
What do you use it for?
I’ve had it for a while,
but ended up uninstalling it,
since I could not think of a good use case.
Other ROMs like Lineage.
On the calendar, I can set people’s birthdays with a yearly reminder so they think I’m super thoughtful for remembering their birthdays. But the phone notified me.
Birday is a nice simple app that I like, it shows all upcoming birthdays and how many days until they happen. Just pulls the data from your calendar so no setup needed.
Happens automatically if you put the birthday on the contact, too
*if you use Google’s Contacts and Calendar services
(I am very much separated from G and my contacts and calendar are hosted on my nas via radicale, so this feature doesn’t exist - but I just made a calendar for birthdays myself, and add when needed)
The ability to change the launcher (i.e., practically the whole user interface) at will simply by installing an alternative one from your app store of choice, or an APK.
Try other app stores like fdroid
That is not an Android feature…
It really is an exclusive Android feature.
But if you can load open source apps without using the Apple app store, I’d love to learn how.
In developers options, turning the animation speeds to .5x
Don’t know if that’s really an underrated feature, but would like to mention it anyway. Everything feels much faster after that. Pretty much the first thing i do when i have a new phone.
Oddly, I set mine to 2x because I like the animation being more… Animated. If I wanted speed I would just turn animation off.
