7 Things That Are Wrong With Android

Listen to this article

Rate this post

Wrong With Android

Wrong With Android- Android has come a long way since its early days. If you’ve been around since then, you know how bad it used to be—laggy, battery-draining, and rooting your device was almost a must just to make it bearable. Fast forward to today, even budget Android phones are fast, smooth, and easy to use. Rooting is now more of a hobby than a necessity, and while software updates are still there, they’re not as exciting anymore. With just a few minor tweaks, it’s safe to say that we might have reached Peak Android. However, just because it’s a lot better doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Even after all these years, there are still seven big things that really bug me.

Understanding Android’s Evolution

This isn’t a video about bashing Android; think of it more as feedback where I go over things that I would love to see fixed or improved. It’s also worth noting that when I refer to Android, I’m talking about stock Android—not the custom skins from different manufacturers like One UI or Oxygen OS, which might have done a better job implementing certain features. I’m discussing things we like to see improved within native Android that we can all benefit from, no matter what Android phone we use.

1. Third-Party Launchers

Let’s start with the big one: third-party launchers. Whenever I try switching to one, the navigation gestures go totally haywire, app switching gets glitchy, and the recent page lags. On some phones, even the smooth animations for opening and closing apps are gone. This has been a problem for over five years, ever since Google introduced their full gesture navigation in Android 10. Unfortunately, this has made me think twice about using third-party launchers altogether.

Here’s what’s causing this buggy experience: ever since Android 10, Google has designed the default stock launcher to handle all the animations for opening, closing, and switching between apps. So when you switch to a third-party launcher, it messes with this functionality. Additionally, third-party developers don’t have access to certain APIs like Quickstep, which would let them optimize the recents page for their launchers.

Google has tried to improve these animations by adding a new API in Android 13 called the Gesture Nav Contract. This helps third-party launchers sync better with the system’s gesture navigation, resulting in more fluid animations when opening, closing, or switching between apps. However, the fix isn’t perfect; it still doesn’t grant them full access to all of Quickstep’s features. This means your default launcher will still have way smoother animations.

To make matters worse, only a few launchers support this newer Gesture Nav Contract API, like Nova 8 and Launch Chair 14. Some OEMs even perform better than others with these animations. It’s gotten so frustrating that a couple of months ago, top third-party launcher developers like Smart Launcher, Nova, Niagara, and Launch Air joined forces to survey users about their experience with custom launchers. They took the feedback straight to Google, but so far, no updates have come.

2. Delayed Features

Another thing that drives me nuts is how stock Android often falls behind in pushing out features that just make sense. These features have been available on other devices for years, yet it usually takes other OEMs like Samsung, OnePlus, or even Apple to get Google to follow suit. For example, scrolling screenshots have been a feature on many Android phones for 4 to 6 years before it became native in Android 12. The same goes for screen recording, which was available on most phones long before it arrived in stock Android.

Widgets are another example. Google didn’t take widgets seriously for over a decade and only updated them a year later after Apple made theirs look amazing. To this day, we still want lock screen widgets to return to stock Android, but so far, almost every OEM has given us lock screen widgets for several years now, while Google only brought them back to tablets two months ago.

3. One-Handed Use

Using Android with one hand is another challenge. Sure, there’s a one-handed mode, but honestly, it doesn’t feel intuitive. Some OEMs, like OnePlus, Oppo, and especially Samsung, have done a much better job of making their UIs more one-handed friendly by shifting UI elements to the lower half of the screen. They’ve even implemented creative features to improve one-handed use.

For example, within the home screen, you can swipe up on the bottom right or left side of the screen to easily pull down all the icons on that page toward your finger. On Samsung, the Good Lock app offers an entire mod called One-Hand Operation Plus that allows you to add gestures to the side of the screen for launching things like quick tools, an app drawer, widgets, and even a virtual touchpad to control the top half of the screen with just one hand.

These features make a huge difference for one-handed use. In contrast, stock Android lacks such functionalities, leaving basic elements like the search bar in the app drawer and the brightness bar in the quick settings placed at the top of the screen, which is too far out of reach.

4. Notification Management

When it comes to notifications, Android has improved, but there’s still room for growth. One thing I would love to see is better organization. Currently, we can silence, minimize, or turn off certain notification channels we don’t care about. However, it would be great to separate important notifications from the less important ones. Sometimes I get a ton of notifications from certain apps, and I don’t want to disable them completely just in case something urgent comes through.

It would be amazing to prioritize certain apps, like messaging or email apps, so their notifications come through instantly, while other less important apps could have their notifications batched and delivered later in the day. This way, I wouldn’t have to check my phone every five minutes to ensure I didn’t miss anything urgent.

You might think that Do Not Disturb mode would solve this problem, but it’s not perfect. I don’t want my phone constantly enabled with Do Not Disturb just to avoid hundreds of dings. Plus, once I disable it, all the unimportant notifications flood in at once, mixing with the important ones. A dedicated space or page for less important notifications would be a huge improvement.

5. Camera Quality in Third-Party Apps

Another classic issue is the camera quality in third-party apps. Whenever I try to take a photo or video within apps like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok, the quality is usually much worse than if I were to shoot within the main camera app. This is a problem that many Android users have faced for a long time, and it’s more frustrating when iPhone users don’t have to deal with the same thing.

The simple answer is that Android manufacturers aren’t required to fully support or expose all their camera features to the tools that Google provides. This means that when third-party apps try to access your camera, they’re often limited to a fraction of what the cameras can actually do. You can download the CameraX Info app to see what camera extensions your OEM has supported for third-party apps.

However, not every app developer will support these newer camera APIs right away. For example, Snapchat did a great job of implementing night mode for the latest Google Pixel and Samsung devices, but most other Android phones still lack this feature, resulting in poor low-light shots. Until Google makes it mandatory for manufacturers to expose their camera capabilities consistently across devices, we’ll likely continue to see subpar camera experiences in third-party apps.

6. Uncertainty in Feature Releases

Not knowing when you’ll get a new feature or software update is another aggravation. Take Android 15, for example. We all expected its official release to happen at the end of summer based on the timeline Google shared at the beginning of the year, but it didn’t drop until mid-October. Google has a habit of promising new features only to say they’re coming later this year, and many Google services and Pixel features get delayed or sometimes never show up at all, especially for users outside the United States.

Even with other Android OEMs, things can get chaotic. For instance, Samsung has pushed back their Android 15 update, known as One UI 7, all the way to 2025. While Apple isn’t perfect either, they tend to do a better job of ensuring that most iPhones receive new features simultaneously.

7. The Expanded Volume Panel

Lastly, I can’t stand how Google made the expanded volume panel on stock Android ridiculously large. Even when minimized, it takes up too much space. While it follows the Material U design language, it doesn’t need to take up that much room. When you rotate your phone to landscape, it gets even worse. This trend has caught on with other OEMs like OnePlus and Oppo, who have made their expanded volume panels take up the entire screen.

Google could have easily made the expanded volume panel a floating set of volume bars instead, which would have been much more practical. In conclusion, these are the seven things that bug me about Android. If you agree with any points I made in this discussion, drop a thumbs up and subscribe for more content. Thank you for sticking around!