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!
You’re right. This came handy when my phone’s screen broke and the touch sensor didn’t work. With USB mouse and keyboard, I could make a backup.
(Bluetooth would have worked too, if the devices are already paired).
My friend’s phone screen broke. So whenever he received an incoming call, he would take a wired mouse out of his pocket and connect it to his phone to answer the call.
With some apps (unsure if any open source ones exist), Android can become a Bluetooth Keyboard for a connected computer too! The keyboard isn’t very useful, but having a portable trackpad for a laptop during presentations may be helpful
There is also Impress Remote for Libreoffice Impress
I use a Bluetooth numpad! I got an 8bitdo mechanical numpad and it’s so clicky and satisfying.
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.
Thanks for reminding, i remember that one if the older android days. Just adjusted it again, its still a really nice mod and speedbump!
I appreciate this setting still existing, especially because some custom skins/UI can be too slow, but IMHO I prefer a balanced/stock value as the animations nowadays are so polished and smooth that I’d rather use it that way than butchering them with faster speeds…
I am using MIUI right now and it has its own version of this, so I just use “balanced mode”.
When I use AOSP I always use stock because even my SD 865 feels weird when the animation is too fast but the app is still loading, I think it kills the momentum lol.
Same, at 1x it just takes too long for animations to complete.
Fun fact if you set it to 1.5x on a samsung, it behaves like an iPhone lol.
Isnt iOS pretty sluggish with the animations? I heard it was on the slower side (as if to show of the animation)
Yeah the reason Androids feel ‘choppy’ compared to iOS is that android lets you take action without finishing the animation, whereas iOS forces you to watch every animation until you can touch the phone again. This is a general trend with iOS, you do as the OS tells you to.
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Digital Wellbeing. Enforce the decisions you made about app usage. Honestly it’s kinda saved my sanity, particularly this year.
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Scheduled text messages. This should be in every single messaging app. I schedule reminders for other people, I schedule messages that I think of at ridiculous hours to go out at reasonable times, I even schedule messages so that sometime else reminds me to do something.
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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.
This is not an Android feature. This is a Google feature and I believe it relies on a round-trip through their servers too.
Yeah it’s a shame Google dragged it’s feet so long and unlike all the crap they advertise but then release only. For the US for the next 6 years, they never went loud about this. So much the easiest way to share.
I wonder if it is too hard for Google to convince Apple to implement this with iOS, even in the form of an app…
I just used pairdrop.net a couple hours ago because I was too lazy to install LocalSend in my gf’s iPhone and it was a breeze to use to share a short video from there to my Android device…
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)
That’s not an Android feature, every digital calendar does that.
Mine doesn’t (radicale) so…
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
Doesn’t work on my Pixel 9.charging it disables battery share.
You might need to check the settings for it, I believe you have to set the item on the… Fuck it I’ll go snag a screenshot of my settings app I use this daily
One of these 2 settings might be getting in your way:
You have like 30s to put the device on your phone or it won’t charge and you have to unplug/replug your phone
I dont seem to have that second option in my Pixel
Pixels have a tendency to have different features depending on the phone you use. Even when it’s the exact same model and firmware you can find some missing features.
Adaway
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.
NewPipe, ReVanced patches, screen rotate with the popup, KineStop, and if you’re adventurous: dual boot different ROMs using A/B.
Try other app stores like fdroid
Not an app “store” per se, but Obtainium
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.
F-Droid is available on iOS?
No but different app stores are also available on other systems. iOS and Android aren’t the only players in town, even though the others have miniscule market share in the west.
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.I need to re set mine up, but my main use cases were opening a music app and playing music, opening Waze, and turning off text notifications if I connected to my cars blue tooth; and connecting to my VPN if I left my home WiFi.
Something else I wanna try soon is silencing my phones notifications if I’m connected to KDE connect on my desktop, since they should come through on the computer anyway
I have a few routines that I use.
For example,
I have one that auto rotates some apps.
One that sends a notification to my watch when the phone is fully charged.
Another that enables NFC when I open the wallet app and disables it automatically.
Another that enables auto rotate, silences phone, and enables DND when playing games.
Some small but useful OneUI features for you Samsung users’
- Dual Bluetooth audio: Samsung devices can stream audio to 2 Bluetooth devices at the same time which is very cool when you have friends who want to listen in but don’t want to share earbuds. I use this very often.
- One time passwords for wifi hotspot: Samsung devices can create a otp for hotspot that only works once and stops working the next time you turn on hotspot. Very useful feature that I use all the time too.
- Bypass charging: If you game with your phone, search for game booster setting in advanced setting and turn on Pause USB PD charging to use bypass charging and save on battery health
- Turn off UltraHDR: On OneUI 7, turn off SuperHDR in advanced setting to stop the screen from brightening whenever you scroll through an UltraHDR video (fuck you for this useless flashbang feature Google and fuck you Apple for defaulting to HDR recording)
If you use the 3 button navigation, there are options for long press of buttons. “Kill foreground app” as back button long-press action is just indispensable when something goes wrong.
Used to use the hell outta that.
Other ROMs like Lineage.
Some Android versions let you map the flashlight to the volume buttons and you can toggle it by pressing both at the same time. The option can be found in the system settings. If your OS does not have the setting, you can map the keys with an app like Torchie. It’s probably the feature I use the most on my phone, I couldn’t live without it at this point.
Pin a app to the screen, so if you need to let someone use their phone they can’t get super nosy.
owner account can have a work profile, separate apps, have two versions of the same app, or just put some apps behind another fingerprint/password (can be different then the main phone unlocks)
Multiple user accounts (totally different accounts, totally different apps) : great if you want to let a kid play games, or let someone search the internet, or if you want to be really clean and keep work apps totally different. Mostly useful on tablets to let multiple people share the tablet.
The ability to run open source apps from fdroid, newpipe is an amazing game changer for anyone who watches youtube. (no ads)
How do I do the multiple account thing
