Well, folks, things certainly are getting busy in the mobile tech space. Samsung recently launched new foldables and wearables, Google’s Pixel 9 series will be here before you know it, and it won’t be long before we have to turn our attention toward the iPhone 16.
But I want to take a quick break from all of that to talk about Motorola. No, the company hasn’t launched a new phone or anything like that. I recently discovered a hidden setting on my Motorola Razr Plus 2024. It’s a setting that lets you make part of your Motorola phone look like an iPhone. It’s weird, unexpected, and possibly a sign of other big changes coming to Motorola phones in the future.
Turning your Motorola phone into an iPhone
By default, the quick settings/notification panel on Motorola phones looks a lot like they do on Google Pixel phones. You have large bubbles for your quick settings, a horizontal brightness slider, and notifications below all of that. It’s clean, simple, and familiar to anyone who’s used an Android phone over the last couple of years.
However, there’s a way to completely change this. On any Motorola phone running Android 14, simply follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app
- Tap on Home & lock screen
- Tap Control center
Here, you’ll see that Classic style is selected by default. Below it, tap the Modern style option. Once you do this, you’ll see that your quick settings look completely different. In fact, they look awfully similar to the Control Center on an iPhone.
How so? Connectivity options for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and mobile data now live in a large bubble near the top. Next to it are vertical sliders for volume and brightness. Below those is a media player, plus small shortcuts for all of your other setting toggles. The gestures are also a bit different. With Modern style selected, you swipe down from the top right of the screen to see your quick settings, while swiping down from the top left shows your notifications. Again, just like how it works on an iPhone.
iPhone comparisons aside, this design has its advantages. Compared to the Classic layout, you see a lot more settings at once. It’s also a bit more customizable, giving you options to hide/show the media player and the text labels for your toggles. It’s not a lot, but they’re nice touches.
A sign of what’s to come?
OK, so there’s an extra design for the quick settings on new Motorola phones. What’s the big deal? There may not be one; this could just be Motorola expanding the customization options for its phones. If that’s the case, cool! However, I do think this could be a sign of bigger software design changes to come.
Although Motorola’s Android 14 update doesn’t look dramatically different from its Android 13 interface, there are subtle visual changes here and there. The “normal” quick settings/notification panel, for example, has a transparent/glass-like design. That transparent background is also found on many of the new widgets introduced with the Razr 2024 and Razr Plus 2024 this year. The Settings and Moto apps have updated designs, too, featuring stark white backgrounds with bold, black text.
Combine all of that with the iPhone-like quick settings layout, and I can’t help but wonder if these are signs of bigger visual changes to come in future Motorola phones and software updates. I asked Motorola about this in an interview earlier this year, and Jeff Snow, the company’s executive director of global innovation and software experiences, indicated that wasn’t the case.
“I don’t think it’s an indication of us finding all of the different ways we can modify Android,” he said. “I think Android does certain things well, and we don’t want to necessarily try to redo that.”
Still, the mind wanders. Maybe Motorola really doesn’t have any other big visual changes planned, and maybe I’m reading too much into this quick settings design. At the very least, it’s a fun one-off way to make your Motorola phone look a little bit more like an iPhone. Surprises are rare with smartphones in 2024, but this certainly was one of them.
