The camera is somewhat more convenient, accessed with a swipe left on the lock screen, but the screen still needs to be turned on for this to work. To turn on the flashlight, something I do several times a day, I have to get up on the screen and press and hold the button in the left corner. To turn on Siri, I have to press and hold the Power button, which has become burdened with responsibilities Since Apple got rid of the Home button. Take my daily driver, the iPhone 12 Mini, for example. Over time, though, phone manufacturers have moved away from being able to access some basic features through a physical procedure. The camera shortcut appeared within a relatively short period of time that Google owned Motorola. A few years before the Pixel 2, Motorola would let you do that Open the camera by turning your phone And the Turn on the flashlight With karate chop – not unlike the way you are Music Mixed on the 2008 iPod Nano.
In the same year, Google HTC mobile division team bought.Īctive Edge was Not Google’s first attempt It provides an alternative to using the touch screen or physical buttons to control your phone as well. the two companies They worked together On the Pixel and Pixel 2, which explains how it ended up on Google devices. The HTC U11, which was released a few months before the Pixel 2, has a similar but more customizable feature called Edge Sense. This version of the feature already exists. I enjoyed having the Assistant, but if I could turn on my flashlight with one tap, I would have instant access to my phone’s most important features no matter what. Even if you’re in an app that hides the navigation buttons or your phone screen is completely disabled, Active Edge still does its job.Īlthough that made it very useful for finding fun facts or making quick calculations and conversions, I would argue that Active Edge would have been more useful if you could remap it. the thing that made it So Convenient is that the pressure always works mainly. Personally, the only time I used a voice assistant on a daily basis was when I had a Pixel 2 because it literally came in handy. Whether you found Active Edge useful is probably due to whether you liked using the Google Assistant, as described in This topic is Reddit. For the record, that’s a change my human nervous system can’t keep up with I can’t say the phone bends at all. According to an old iFixit disassembly processThis is made possible by a few pressure gauges installed inside the phone that can detect the very slight bend in your phone case when pressed. Phones are solid bodies made of metal and plastic, however, the Pixel can tell when I press more than I just do. We’ll talk about how useful this is in a second, but I don’t want to hide how amazing that feels. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales/The Verge
Looking at the sides of the Pixel 2, you’d never guess it’s actually a button. You don’t have to wake the phone, long press any physical or virtual buttons, or tap on the screen. However, give the bare edges of the phone a good squeeze, and a subtle vibration and motion will play as Google Assistant pops up from the bottom of the screen, ready to start listening to you.
Sure, there’s a power button and volume switch, but other than that, the sides are sparse. Looking at the sides of the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, you won’t see anything to indicate you have anything special. But it effectively gave you something that modern phones lack: a way to physically interact with the phone to get something he did. It used to be called Active Edge, and it lets you invoke the Google Assistant with just a tap on your phone. The Pixel 2 is a phone that is almost five years old, but it has introduced a feature that I miss more and more with each passing year.