The technology lords giveth and they taketh away. I don’t know if some features weren’t cost effective, or interrupted and irritated unsavvy phone users to the point of complaints, or if there was a straight up vendetta against some features that have been removed from Android phones because so many of them were loved but they’re definitely gone now.
Personally, I love gimmicks. People will say they are bad because they’re experimental but I will gladly try them out as soon as possible. They’re fun! They’re new! Gimmicks give us more to expect out of our technology and are innovative pieces of dreams thought up from brilliant minds. When I got my first Android phone I was obsessed, I literally spent a week researching and watching videos to learn what it could do. My Galaxy S4 was my first love and when I think back about the magic of my first touch screen phone I can definitely say that the gimmick features were what made it truly special.
The biggest thing that mystified me on my Galaxy S4 were the “gestures”. With a wave of your hand, you could scroll through pictures and skip songs. Was it a little impractical? Maybe, the feature had to be turned on so if you didn’t know it was an option you might have missed it completely. Another cool “gesture feature” was touchless scrolling. If you were reading a webpage the camera would track your eyes to see if you needed to scroll down farther and would accomplish it for you. Although to be honest I don’t remember that one working all too well.
Do you remember flip phones? Do you remember how dramatically you used to be able to hang up on someone? As soon as phones stopped being clamshells you lost that edge of angry phone conversations. However, it seems someone wanted the dramatic flair back and they took the idea of “flip the phone” to heart. Done talking to someone on the phone and want to release some anger? Slap that thing on a surface face down and it would abruptly end your call; almost like slamming a landline down on its receiver. You could also silence unwanted incoming calls this way. Just flip the phone over.
From the same era of Android “flip to hang up” was the shake light. This is probably the most useful Android feature they ever removed. It wasn’t so much gimmick-y as it was just plain helpful. Need a flashlight? Shake your phone twice. Literally giving your phone a couple little shakes would turn on the back flashlight. I want this back so bad. I genuinely cannot think of a reason this would be removed, other than sometimes it popped on in your pocket. However, today’s phones are smart enough to detect when they are legitimately trying to be accessed and when it’s unintentional movements or button presses and will ignore them. I think it’s time to bring the shake light back to Android phones.
One of the most sorely missed features was the pop out window. I don’t mean like how it is today. I’m talking about when you could pop out a perfectly sized and optimized video player for Netflix, Hulu, your own videos, and anything else that played a video format. I remember using it so often on my tablet to watch shows and play games or browse the internet at the same time. It was easy to manage and you could sling it around the screen anywhere you needed it. Then they released an update a few months later and the feature was removed. Why? For what reason? Maybe they thought they gave us too much power. They tried to replace it years later in some dumbed down version that most phones have today. Trust me when I say at one point, the pop out video player was perfect.
The last and newest beloved, deleted feature would be the haptic button for the Galaxy S9/S9+. This is currently the phone I have now and I dread the day I have to upgrade because my haptic “push” button will be a thing of the past. All you have to do to wake your phone up is press in the center on the bottom of the screen. The phone acts like there’s a “button” there that needs to be pressed instead of simply tapped. “That’s annoying, doesn’t it defeat the purpose of a touchscreen?” NO! It’s glorious! It’s so convenient to have around and you can even change the pressure sensitivity. Sometimes it does get in the way when I’m typing too fast and putting too much pressure behind my fingers, but the tradeoff is in favor. I genuinely do not want to get a newer phone because I know the haptic button has been removed.
Why were all these gimmicks laid to rest? They were fun, really useful, and they were interesting. Were most consumers afraid of trying new things? Was the software too expensive to produce? Did Android remove the features just because they could? Maybe so. I’ll keep wishing and hoping that maybe some of these will return one day. I’m not going to hold my breath, though.
-w
