ISSUE 67 • ANDROID ADVISOR 7ANDROID 10Dark mode
Yep, there’s a dark mode. A proper, system-wide one
too, but it’s notable that it has taken till now for Pixels
to get this. Samsung’s One UI deploys it very well
and has done so since the Galaxy S10 launched in
February. For Google to take this long is weird, but at
least it’s here. It applies the theme to most, but not all,
stock Google apps, and doesn’t take over third party
ones, so a lot is still light where you want it to be dark.
Aesthetics are one thing, but dark mode is also
good for saving battery. Every Pixel phone has an
OLED screen and will use less battery life with a dark
screen as it doesn’t have to light the pixels up. We use
it for that more than anything.
Gestures
More controversial are the new gestures, changed
umpteen times in the beta versions of Android 10
before landing on what we have here – and they are
basically what the iPhone X has had since 2017. In fact,
this decision would have been more controversial for
the Android faithful if Google hadn’t given the option
to use the pill and back button of Pie or the traditional
three button set up.
The new gestures are swipe up to go home from
anywhere, meaning there’s no home button. A swipe
up and hold gets you the app switcher. From this
screen you can then swipe again for the app drawer.
It’s a tad fiddly and the animations are nowhere near
as fluid as on iOS, but they are improved over Pie.
Swiping along the bottom of the screen quickly
slides between apps (yes, like the iPhone) and swiping