Google is thinking about putting a reboot button in their Pixel phones, and here’s why that’d be amazing
Believe it or not, Google doesn’t believe in reboot buttons. You shut your phone down, you had better well reboot it your damn self! Well, that might finally change after years of resistance.
Some pre-launch Pixel phones are toting that elusive Reboot option. It appears when you hold down the power button, naturally. It’s not certain if this feature will make it into the final build headed to Pixel phones, unfortunately, as the devices are currently on pre-launch firmware.
It may not seem like a big deal, but a reboot button is pretty huge. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned my phone or tablet off with the intention of rebooting it, only to find that — when I return some odd minutes (or hours) later — it’s as dead as a walnut.
Then, when I have an important message to get off in a timely manner, I have to go through the process of turning the phone on and watching it reoptimize the hundreds of apps that I don’t even use. And if that’s not enough, the billion notifications that have come through will all flood in at the same time, and it will be hell trying to clear them all as more and more apps brute force their way into my device’s cache of memory and slow my phone down to a crawl.
To top it all off, I have to get a mouthful from friends and family who were trying to get through to me as I was going through this process. By the end of my rounds, I found out that one of the calls was in regards to a McDonald’s Monopoly piece that my friend needed to win the grand prize.
But guess what? SOMEONE ELSE ALREADY CLAIMED THE PRIZE IN THE TIME IT TOOK TO REGAIN MY COMMUNICATIVE FOOTING AND I WAS TOO LATE BECAUSE MY PHONE NEVER REBOOTED. I COULD HAVE BEEN A MILLIONAIRE!
You know not the angst caused by the lack of a reboot button, Jon Snow.
So, you see, a reboot button is of the utmost importance for people like me, and we hope Google is finally coming around to realizing that.