Android phones have so many different features to try and make the user experience easier. One feature that many use to help them quickly change settings is the quick settings panel. The quick settings panel allows users to quickly toggle or access settings and features that may need to be modified or used often.
While the feature is available on all Android phones, it looks different depending on your phone’s OEM. While Pixel phones have the “stock Android experience”, I don’t think that’s a benefit in this instance. I think Samsung is the one who truly has things figured out.
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What do the quick settings panels look like?
The Pixel’s is pretty basic
The Pixel’s quick access settings panel is about as basic as it gets. You can choose and arrange up to eight items on each page that appear in rather large bubbles in the panel. The color theming will match your Material You settings. The only persistent items are the brightness slider at the very top of the screen, the power button and settings gear at the bottom, and the customize button in the middle right. The menu does not take up the whole screen as you can see media controls or your notifications underneath it.
To see other pages of settings chips, simply swipe left or right. If you want to edit the order of these tiles, hit the pencil icon at the bottom right of the panel. To access the panel you need to swipe down on your home screen twice.
Samsung has a lot more options
Samsung’s quick settings menu, which it calls the Quick panel, shows much more information than the Pixel’s. Unlike on Pixel, Samsung’s panel is split up into a few distinct sections. You can choose and arrange up to 12 items on each page that each appear as a small symbol in the middle of the panel. The Bluetooth and Wi-Fi toggles persist at the top of the screen, while the brightness slider, with eye comfort shield and dark mode toggles, as well as the smart view and device control toggles live at the bottom of the screen. There are also buttons for customization, settings, and power at the top right.
You can swipe back and forth on the middle section of the panel to see your different pages of tiles. To edit the items and order they appear on the quick access panel, you hit the pencil icon at the very top of the screen. There are a few more settings for the panel you can modify here as well. You can either swipe down on your home screen twice or swipe down once from the top right of your screen to get to the panel.
Why do I think Samsung’s version is better than Google’s?
While I’d consider myself a Pixel fan, I am jealous of Samsung’s implementation of the Quick panel. I feel like there are a couple of main issues with how Pixel does things that make Samsung superior.
Space is poorly used
Pixel’s use of space is poor compared to Samsung’s. While the Pixel version may look slightly cleaner, only having eight large pills and the brightness slider severely limits how you can set it up. With Samsung’s setup, you can add nine shortcuts alongside many other persistent items, in a surprisingly coherent visual layout.
Samsung’s version also makes better use of the screen. Where Google limits the panel to the top 3/5 of the screen, Samsung takes up the entirety of the screen. That means you can fit more and, perhaps most importantly, much of it is easier to reach while you’re holding your phone with one hand. Overall, Samsung does a better job of making use of the screen real estate available.
Samsung’s persistent items make a lot of sense
Another important item in the quick access panel is the persistent items. While there is a customizable portion of the panel on both Pixel and Samsung, there are also persistent items that stick around no matter what page you’re on. Both phones share persistent power, customization, and settings buttons as well as the brightness slider. For the Pixel, this is all it brings to the table.
Samsung takes this a step further. It also keeps the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Smart View, and Device Control toggles around, no matter which shortcut screen you’re on. Frankly, I think the Smart View toggle is fairly useless, and the Device Control toggle doesn’t do much for me, either. Making Wi-Fi and Bluetooth persistent, on the other hand, is simple genius.
Those toggles will likely be the two most used on your phone, no matter how you use it. By making them persistent, you don’t have to scroll through pages of shortcuts to find them, they’re always there in the same place. Even though it’s a very simple thing, I think it’s an important one that Samsung does right.
A gesture makes a difference
There’s one other thing I really envy about Samsung’s quick access panel, and that’s the optional gesture to get there. If you enable the gesture, you can simply swipe down from the top right of the screen, and it will bring you to the Quick panel. No need to double-swipe down like the Pixel, you’ll get there immediately.
This solves a slight annoyance I’ve had with the stock quick settings panel since Pixels ditched the rear fingerprint scanner. When the fingerprint scanner was there, you could swipe on it to pull down the notification menu and quick access panel, which seemed natural. Swiping down on the screen twice feels slower and more clunky.
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While subtle, I think the slight tweaks Samsung made to the quick access panel in its One UI skin are beneficial. They make more sense and make interacting with the panel more convenient for users. I hope to see Google adopt some of these ideas soon — perhaps with Android 15.
