This is sadly still the case and one of the main reasons I use Samsung phones today instead of Pixels. One Hand Operation gives me more ergonomic and easy to use gestures while also playing nicely with third party launchers.
There’s just no way in hell I could use the pixel launcher as my daily driver. It’s too simple and lacks the bare minimum customization options that I would need to be able to tolerate it.
It is already pretty great. The one thing that annoyed me enough to stop using it (for now) is that it displays two refreshing spinner animations whenever you pull down to refresh the feed. It’s a small thing, but it irked me enough to just stick to using the mobile app for a bit longer.
UPDATE: Nevermind, it looks like this was fixed in a recent update. I’m back on Connect now, and it’s pretty great. Probably the best Android app for Lemmy right now.
Adguard is the best option for system-wide, rootless ad blocking on Android IMO.
It’s the best because it also performs cosmetic filtering to reclaim the empty space that most other blockers leave behind after removing an ad from a web page. This makes web pages look much cleaner and is something that I value in any adblocker, mobile or otherwise. The free version works across any browser or embedded webview instance within apps, and the paid version filters all ads within apps as well. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Completely negligible impact on battery life as well.
One UI has been crammed with features for years now, many of which would be very nice to have in Pixel phones. Maintenance Mode would be good, I guess, but I can think of several others that would be far more beneficial to have merged into AOSP in some form.
For example, One Hand Operation + is the best implementation of gesture navigation in all of Android IMO. It’s quicker and more efficient than traditional gestures, more customizable, and plays well with third-party launchers. It’s one of the killer apps that makes it hard for me to consider anything other than a Samsung phone these days, especially since Google has made no attempts at fixing the wonky behavior of the native gesture navigation and third-party launchers.
I’ve tried them all, and as of right now Connect feels the most polished and feature rich. So that’s my recommendation.