What is a nifty little feature modern gadgets have lost?
What is a nifty little feature modern gadgets have lost?
For me it’s the notification light you used to find on older phones, was particularly good to know if your phone was charged without picking it up
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Headphone jack, bigger batteries, front facing speakers, SD card slot, IR blaster, magnetic field to let you use your credit cards at check out from your phone (MST) - THROUGH THE ACTUAL CARD READER SO THEY DIDN'T NEED GOOGLE/APPLE/SAMSUNG WALLET WHATEVER THE FUCK. I also agree that I miss the light too lol
That said, here's what I can't stand in newer phones: camera bumps. Unless you're a droid x or Nexus get that rocking on any flat service while I'm trying to type shit outta here. I don't give a shit about my cameras but if they need to be that fat and advanced, just make the rest of the phone that fat and give me the extra battery instead of making a tiny stovetop in the corner. Fuckin weird and dumb. Also camera cutouts in the screen, put that shit under the screen or set it next to a front facing speaker on the bezel. Also bezel-less phones, I know we're trying to fill our phones with screens but my fat palms don't care about that when I'm accidentally touching everything on the side while holding it
My personal pet peeve is pre-installed, un-removable software and apps. My current mobile phone for example has apps that link to twitter, facebook, amazon etc. none of which I will ever use, but you can somehow not delete them. Why do I need to have that virtual junk in my phone?
Especially when they can be DISABLED, but not UNINSTALLED. Grinds my gears.
This might help you. https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
I was going to mention the IR blaster. I had one on my LG G4 & G5 if I remember correctly. It was so cool! I was so bummed when they stopped having it.
What was it for?
You can control everything support IR controller(receiver) with that. Like TV or window AC unit
That's really cool!
Yep I totally miss having an ir blaster in my phone. Specifically for the air conditioner.
Also. Imagine having a universal controller in your pocket at all times.
TV at the bar? TV at the dentist?
Ooohhh the hijinks...
Changing the channel on tvs in public spaces mostly.
Anything that takes an IR signal most commonly TV remotes but had other applications as well
Some phones still have em, most Xiaomi phones do but then you gotta put up with their software or be comfortable flashing a custom ROM.
I love having an IR blaster in my phone mostly cause my work doesn't trust us with air conditioning remotes but also I never have to stress about finding the right remote for everything since I've got anything I might interact with daily that uses an IR remote programmed into my phone.
Honestly this irks me to no end. We now have thousand dollar phones with all the speed, Ai capabilities, design, cameras, speakers, etc. Everything you could've wanted at its best in terms of performance, picture and camera quality, AI features.... Except now you're missing headphone jacks, replaceable batteries, Ir blasters, SD cards, extra Sim slots.... Like, really, a thousand dollars for a phone and it has less features than a 200 dollar phone? Less features than phones from 6 years ago? Why the fuck have we sacrificed so much?? We had the chance to have a long golden era of long lasting, everything capable phones, but instead we're stuck with boring bricks that do less than before, last less due to batteries wearing out, and come bloated with shit that you don't need and can't remove.
We seriously need some phone company out there to spec the fuck out of a high end phone with all these features, AND which meets GrapheneOS requirements and lets us flash the phone with whatever the fuck we want. We've gone completely backwards on phones, and it's becoming more and more pointless to upgrade, you're just changing phones for the batteries these days.
I miss htc lol, the One was PERFECT at the time, and I remember Loving the Nexus 6P as well
htc lol, the One was PERFECT
PRC agents loved you having it too! #LOLIsNotPunctuation
#LOLIsNotPunctuation
You are like those old people who complained "hay is for horses" lol
What are you getting out of policing harmless language
Well I haven't owned one since college, but I was a cell phone salesman, so I loved it too. And I'm glad I already knew about that and used a comma as punctuation after "lol," but thanks for the info I guess? Fair warning, this is the Internet, and you might run into more people like me :o
This comment covers it all perfectly
100% of this. It's not just that I don't need the screen space, it's that my hands are not capable of holding my s22 without touching the screen because they had the fucking stupid idea to wrap the screen around the sides. I'm convinced the engineers at samsung are running an experiment to see how fucking stupid their phones can get without losing sales.
I suspect that the magnetic feature you desire is pretty unique to the usa. Anywhere else I've been in the world was chip or tap. Swiping the card would throw an error to use the chip only. So that country is just really far behind.
the magnetic feature you desire
... Sounds like standard NFC for tap-to-pay.
The US was actually one of the first places the feature was removed, because (according to Samsung) there's not really a need for it anymore since so many places adopted tap to pay so early. So we are actually just too far ahead in that regard for my taste lol. It's also probably good to note that I haven't seen this feature since the S20. (Also I definitely think Samsung exaggerated that and it was just cheaper to get rid of).
Still a very handy feature that I miss, there's ALWAYS places you go that are still behind tech-wise XD
I was so frustrated when we switched to chip cards in the US, but did chip and signature, instead of chip and PIN like the rest of the world. WHY WHY WHY!?
THROUGH THE ACTUAL CARD READER SO THEY DIDN'T NEED GOOGLE/APPLE/SAMSUNG WALLET WHATEVER THE FUCK
That's not an issue, I'm assuming you mean the establishment didn't need it, but just to cover my bases I'll give you both scenarios:
- either you're talking about your phone needing an app, which was still the case for the magnetic card thing, but I doubt you were talking about this.
- or more likely, you are talking about the place you're paying needing a new PoS for receiving NFC based payment. In this case the issue is from the retailers trying to get another cut of the money by making you go through their app, when they can receive that payment via tap to pay which is also a thing on new cards, I have used them both in my country without any issue because we don't have those ass backwards retailers, there's an issue of the person taking payment being unaware and trying to enable another mobile based payment method instead of just setting it to card based payment.
I'm talking about MST, which was actual hardware on the phone used in conjunction with software to fool card readers into thinking you swiped the actual card, even if they didn't support nft. It was super handy and easy for the shops that haven't upgraded yet.
https://www.paymentsjournal.com/samsung-begins-to-phase-out-support-of-mst-for-samsung-pay/
I know, but that's not really an app issue, that would be equivalent to complaining about cards without magnetic strip which only rely on NFC. It's a result of new technology and not some bad idea trying to do things in a different way. It's like complaining about touch screen tech because you can't do things the exact way you used to on flip phones.
That's like saying it's ok that they removed the headphone jack because Bluetooth is newer technology? And I know it's not an app issue, I was complaining about a hardware removal? I'm so confused after this comment lol
The magnetic thing was only ever a Samsung thing and it wasn't as secure as NFC, NFC works basically the same as the thing you're talking about, its only flaw would be that it doesn't work with the old style card readers.
I never claimed otherwise? OP asked what a nifty feature on old gadgets was that's not on newer gadgets, and I said that. That's an old feature that's not on newer gadgets, and it was very handy at the time because very few stores had adopted tap to pay. Would it be AS handy today? Certainly not, but there have still been times I've missed it when a store doesn't have tap to pay.
Yes it's outdated. Isn't that the whole point of everything in this thread??? I just keep getting more confused lol
Edit: to clarify, the phone I had had BOTH MST and NFC. NFC had actually already been around and MST was the new thing at the time. It was simply a cool additional feature.
My current phone has all the things you listed except MST (never heard of that before though), and I bought it specifically for those reasons. Made by Xiaomi who still seems to want to give users features for some reason. Unlocked, rooted, custom rom, the whole shebang, I'm very happy with it.
It does still have a small front camera hole and a big back camera bump, but I don't mind those personally. Though I do wish the camera bump wasn't off centre. And like someone mentioned, I do wish it had an indicator led somewhere.
Oh dang, I might have to check it out!
Never knew there was something like a ‘magnetic field’ how did that work?
It was MST, I know some Samsung phones had them, and it was used at credit card checkouts for stores that don't have the nft/tap to pay. As far as I know it literally spoofed the magnetic field your credit card makes, so the credit card reader would think you swiped it. Super handy at stores that aren't caught up with the tech when you didn't have your wallet lol