“Android Features That Were Once Favored by Users, Now Discontinued”

Android is celebrating its 18th birthday this year; by September, it will be eligible to vote. Throughout nearly two decades, the mobile operating system has undergone numerous updates, with various tweaks from Google, both advantageous and detrimental, ranging from new themes to features that were phased out. Google is notorious for discontinuing many of its offerings, including several Android functionalities.

Take, for instance, the recently discontinued Instant Apps that allowed users to try out apps and games without having to download them (by streaming instead), along with quirky options like Active Edge that enabled launching Assistant through a squeeze on your Pixel device. Due to a significant AI initiative, Google Assistant will soon be retired, making way for Gemini. Even seemingly harmless functionalities like Android Beam’s straightforward file sharing and Live Folders, which provided dynamic content as an introduction to widgets, are now absent.

Though there’s no doubt that Android has evolved tremendously, to the extent that it is now a relatively refined OS that no longer relies on extensive community modifications and poorly developed features of the past, some of the discontinued features left in its continually evolving path are still missed today, either out of nostalgia or simply because their replacements don’t measure up (we’re looking at you, Gemini).

If you’ve never come across Instant Apps, that wouldn’t be surprising. The feature was unveiled in 2016, rolled out in 2017, and was phased out by 2025. Instant Apps didn’t even survive for a full decade. But what were Instant Apps, you wonder? It was fundamentally an innovative concept. As the name indicates, Android devices could instantly access apps and games from partners. Instead of downloading the app, it would stream to your screen in segments (and get removed once completed), allowing for a try-out of the application without having to commit to a download.

By reducing the entry barriers and tackling storage issues, Instant Apps aimed to enhance installation rates. While this was successful for infrequently used applications (such as viewing a random video via Vimeo), unfortunately, it appears that user adoption of the feature was rather limited, leading to its discontinuation. Ultimately, we lost a rather useful feature, especially since it also supported games, enabling users to jump right into the action before agreeing to a hefty file installation.

The most disappointing part is that there are no plans to replace Instant Apps. While Google is <a href="https://www.bgr.com/