Vanilla Android ROMs need better power toggle options

An action which I do quite a lot on my Android phone is toggle the power settings; switching WiFi on and off, changing screen brightness, disabling mobile network network connections or switching GPS on and off. In the stock Vanilla Android ROMs, this can either be done from the settings menu or with the Power Control Widget which can be placed on a homescreen. However, this means that I always need to get to a certain homescreen to toggle these options, while I mostly want to do them while I am already in an app. This means I need to go out of the app, to the right homescreen, toggle the option and go back into the app. This hole use scenario is cumbersome, inefficient and after 5 times quite annoying too.

The are several solutions out there, but because they are not implemented in the stock Android ROM, they never quite fit or look right. There are for instance custom ROMs which display power toggles in the notifications pulldown menu, which is a great solution in its essence, but most custom implementations look horrible and just don’t fit the sleek look of the menu. The only ROM I encountered that did this right was the MIUI ROM, which had a clean looking row of toggles at the bottom of the pulldown menu.

Homescreen power toggle widget

MIUI notification power toggle

Custom power toggle

I think that Google should really look at some of these custom implementations of faster power toggle options and include them in the next release of Android, because from a usability and clicks-to-result standpoint, a lot can be gained. This is basically the same situation that Apple has with its crappy notification system on iOS. For many releases, people have been complaining of the intrusive way that iOS displays its notifications but Apple still doesn’t change them. Leave it to Jailbreak hackers who just released a much better notification plugin for iOS this week. I think the big companies can learn some things from small independent designers who fix everyday annoyances in these mobile operating systems to make it just work better for everyone.