I love my Pixel, but I still miss my old OnePlus phone

I used to love OnePlus phones — I had three of them. But over the years, the brand lost a lot of its appeal to me for several reasons, so I decided to switch to a Pixel.

I don’t regret it. The Pixel experience is right up my alley, but it’s still far from perfect. OnePlus phones get a lot of things right, and there are features exclusive to the brand that I miss dearly.

From OnePlus to Pixel: The features left behind

Alert slider. OnePlus phones have it — most of them — and the Pixels don’t. I used it all the time. Whether I was heading into a doctor’s office, had a Zoom call, went to bed, or did an activity during which I didn’t want to be bothered by notifications and calls, I was able to easily silence my phone without unlocking it. I loved it.

The process with the Pixel, and most other phones, is different. I have to unlock it, swipe down the notification panel that’s usually full of, well, notifications, and then find and toggle on the Do Not Disturb mode. I’ve had my Pixel for over a year and this process still bothers me since I always recall how simple it was with my old OnePlus phones.

The problem is that it’s easy for me to forget that the phone is in Do Not Disturb mode, as I often overlook the tiny icon in the notification bar. There’s just so much stuff going on up there, so it’s easy to miss. I didn’t have this problem with my OnePlus since I’ve noticed — and felt — if the alert slider was at the top position.

Then there are the gestures. I loved using them on my OnePlus phone to open apps with a simple swipe across the screen. The most common use for me was drawing a V on the screen while it was switched off to turn on the flashlight. It’s a lifesaver, especially when I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as I didn’t have to turn on the screen and then find the flashlight option while my brain was still half asleep.

Granted, my Pixel does have a flashlight option that can show up on the lock screen. You have to touch and hold the icon in the bottom left corner for the flashlight to start working. However, I use face recognition, which skips the lock screen once the camera recognizes my face. So to use the feature, I have to wake up the display and make sure it’s not pointed at my face. This ensures that the lock screen shows up, and I can then hold the flashlight icon and turn it on. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a hassle, especially since I was used to a more streamlined method on my OnePlus.

Then there’s the app locker, which makes it easy to hide apps from view on OnePlus phones. And when you need them, just swipe right while in the app drawer and unlock the folder with your fingerprint.

Pixels didn’t have this for a long time but gained the functionality with Android 15. However, OnePlus’ implementation is better as it is really hidden from sight. When enabled on a Pixel, a “Private” bar shows up at the bottom of the app drawer and is there at all times, constantly reminding me of the apps I hid because of my bad habit of using them without a real purpose when I’m bored.

Next up are charging speeds. They were insanely fast on my old OnePlus phones. In around 40 minutes or so, the phone went from zero to 100%. I loved the fact that I could just plug it in for 15 minutes in the morning, and it got enough juice to get me through the day.

The story with my Pixel is different, to say the least. The charging is as slow as a snail, if not slower. It takes almost two hours to fully charge my Pixel, which seems like forever when coming from a device like OnePlus. And a 15-minute top-up doesn’t get me as far as with my old OnePlus devices, which causes issues for me when the battery is about to die and I have to leave the house in five minutes. Do better, Google.

Am I switching back?

No. I really miss these features, but they aren’t important enough for me to make the switch. If I did, I’d have to say goodbye to all the great things my Pixel offers, and I’m not willing to do it.

Pixels have longer software support, with Google promising seven OS upgrades for its latest models. For reference, the newest OnePlus will only get four OS upgrades. I also get new Android versions on day one, while I sometimes had to wait months to get them on my OnePlus phones.

I much prefer the cameras of the Pixel to those of OnePlus handsets, mainly due to all the software tricks on offer. In my experience, there’s also less bloatware than on OnePlus phones, even though both are way better than Samsung in this area. Then there’s the look and feel of Pixels, which is the best in the industry, in my opinion.

I also frequently use Pixel’s Quick Tap feature, as I can bring up Gemini just by tapping the back of the phone. And let’s not forget about the Pixel Weather app, which is the best one I’ve used so far — and it’s not even close.

With that in mind, I’m sticking with my Pixel, but I’ll continue to long for the features I left behind when making the switch to Google’s phone. It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest a phone series has gotten to it in my experience.