I am so amused at the “HiLight” feature (lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen). This is a feature that was on the Android phones of old (including the original G1) and I loved it, but it got phased out in favor of “always on displays”… which apparently now we want less of!

It’s funny how trends like this are a circle sometimes.

This is precisely why I left Android.

Google can't seem to decide on a direction and stick with it. Years of new features that inevitably ended up abandoned 2 versions later resulted in a constantly changing and unpredictable user experience.

It was fun while I had free time in college and enjoyed flashing ROMs, but as I got busier with life this lack of refinement pushed me away.

The RGB leds were one of my favorite features of early Android phones. I even backed a terrible Kickstarter campaign that synced those colors to an RGB wristband (this was before smartwatches were a thing).

They had it as a hidden feature up till the nexus 5 or 6 I believe. Someone bothered to include hardware for an LED even if the stock software never supported it.