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
Headphone jacks on phones. I know most people use Bluetooth nowadays, but I was forced to use Bluetooth because my phone no longer has a headphone jack. Corded headphones were nifty because you didn't need to charge them every couple of hours. As long as your phone had a charge, you could listen to anything you want without having to stop to swap headphones or charge your wireless Bluetooth set.
Swappable batteries in mobile phones.
It will most likely come back due to EU legislation.
Nope, that EU legislation only requires batteries be replaceable, not swappable. In other words, you probably won't need a heat gun to replace it, but you'll probably still need a screwdriver.
The fairphone and pinephonenhave that.
Was about to mentioned it. I have the Fp5 and the only thing that i miss is the headphonejack. Everything else is there:
- battery which can be just swapped
- expendable storage
- easy to repair
- the parts are also reasonably priced
I see this get talked about a lot.
Almost all my inside phone batteries I've had in cheaper knockoff phones have been replaceable. It's not as easy as pulling the back cover off and instantly swapping it, but it's not THAT much harder. It's doesn't exactly require microsoldering. Which is the reason why I know my last three have been replaceable despite being in-house.
Manufacturers really just need to make better and more secure charge ports. Having to resolder my last two blu phones and a Samsung because the charge ports go bad is just annoying.
Never had issues with a battery in all my years of using smartphones though.
I miss 1998 and my nokia I could use for self defense.
Absolutely the damn LED. I would love to trade the stupid never-being-used selfie-cam for a damn 5 cent LED.
And swappable batteries. And a headphone-jack. And root by default (imagine you winpc came with no admin-pwd. Lol)... And....
I used to love customising the notification colour on my old phones, so good.
I miss my headphone jack so damn much, I'm over Bluetooth earbuds breaking constantly and being so damn expensive and low quality.
I used to have a similar problem - even if well reviewed, budget and midrange bluetooth earbuds would not last while budget-midrange wired earphones would last forever.
Think it's just build quality for bluetooth buds. I got a set of Galaxy buds, 1st gen, roughly 3+ years and still running strong to this day. Was not cheap though.
What I don't understand is why the notification LED was removed in the first place? It can easily be put under the screen.
The LED was so helpful, and it's so annoying when I don't see an important message for hours, because I haven't used my phone.Because if you can read an LED notification system you have no purpose to pick up the cellphone.
Cellphones are not designed FOR YOU. They are designed by marketeers for you to use.
Once you realize this, all the anti-consumer shit makes sense.
I have no effing clue. Maybe to get us to actually look at the damn phone more often? Because of the people who're drowning in spam? Makes not THAT much sense. Probably to save a cent in circuit-design, because only the nerds were using the stupid LED? I really would like to know too.
I got all three on my XCover 6 Pro
Root by default is an awful idea.
Of course not by default, that'd be dumb. Every app that wants it pops up a Y/N-dialogue. That's how I want it. It's my phone, goddamit. I might've phrased that a bit misleading :-)
I also just don’t understand why apple didn’t put one in the dynamic island, could have worked really well
Not sure but you can have the back camera led flash when you get a notification at least.
3.5mm headphone jack
There are often enterprise versions that still have it. Like the S10E for example.
This going away has just make the Tiktok tide that much more horrendous. I work in a school. The hallways are nothing but that horrid shit blasting out of hundreds of bad speakers.
You don't think it'd still be the same even with the headphone jack still there? Wireless headphones and converters for wired headphones do exist, they just don't care.
My condolences. I stress out the moment a child thrusts a phone in front of me to watch a "funny" video
I can only imagine the hellscape that is your school
People keep going on about that and I get it from the point of not having to charge headphones all the time. But to me that is a very mild inconvenience compared to having to deal with those fucking cables all the time. I hate cables so damn much.
Oh, my problem isn't with charging them. They actually hold a charge for a super long time.
I’d like bluetooth earbuds a lot more if I could find some that aren’t “smart.” If I put on a beanie, I bump them. If I remove one earbud to converse, I bump it. I’ve not once intentionally used a gesture-based control on an earbud for anything else other than undoing the situation I’ve caused by bumping them. Otherwise, I control everything with my phone. If I’m working out, I just select my playlist, mute notifications, and I don’t have to touch anything after that. Gesture-based earbuds are not for me.
I really don’t think there are dumb bluetooth earbuds, though. At least, I haven’t been able to find any.
And I don't mind cables as much as you do. I think my favorite earbuds would be those that are connected to each other by a cable, but again -- only if they were not smart.
For me I'm just very attached to my earphones. I had tried out different earphones for a long time when I was younger before I discovered these and I've been using them for over 8 years now. I don't really want to switch to a different pair of earphones.
It's more than just having to charge them I wouldn't even really consider that much of a downside with how long they last. I haven't yet ran out of charge before I was ready to take mine out. The actual downsides are- Wireless earbuds are expensive. The batteries in them wear out over time and you have to buy all new ones which is wasteful. Bluetooth adds a noticeable delay that sucks when watching video. My car doesn't have bluetooth so I need a headphone jack for AUX. I have both and like wireless ones when I'm on the go but if I'm stationary wired don't cause any problems.
The newest Asus zenfone is still rocking it!
HTC just came out with a phone that has a headphone jack AND expandable memory. I hope they go for a gen 2 in the near future since it had some kinks to work out, such as a curved glass screen, becase then it would be just about everything I could ask for in a phone.
Get a dongle. Get several. Stick them on the ends of all your headphones and aux cables and forget that you don't have a headphone jack on your phone.
I do have one. That's how I listen to music in my old ass car XD
But still I wish they'd just never removed something that was so useful and immediately accessible to everyone
I have like 5. It still doesn't make it less inconvenient. I use my earphones for my laptop for work and my phone when I'm commuting so I have to attach the dongle, plug it into my phone, get to work, unplug the dongle plug it in the laptop and do the whole process again when I go home and repeat every day. It's a pain. Not to mention the occasional times where you want to charge your phone while you're listening to music.
My Note 9 still has it!
WAVES OLD MAN CANE AROUND THREATENINGLY
First smartphone I had is still my favorite. Motorola Droid. I still have it!
The battery life is hell, though
Privacy.
Have you tried not shitting with the door open?
My cat does not allow it.
But if I close the door how will people know the bathroom is occupied?
Try to let go of Google everything. Start by ditching Chrome and Chromium based browsers
I switched to duck duck go who knows how many years ago. Haven’t looked back.
Can’t even remember when I started using Firefox, but that was probably around the time when Opera became popular. Before Crome existed, I was already on FF and never regretted staying there. At that point, I was already somewhat aware of privacy matters, so switching to Chrome seemed completely stupid to me.
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
By far replaceable batteries. You used to be able to purchase physically larger and higher capacity batteries to get insane battery life, but because they would include a larger rear plastic for the phone it would still look normal. Now we have to waste space and lose efficiency with external power banks.
Physical buttons in cars for radio and environment settings.
There used to be a time when I could have my hand on the gear shifter and just reach out with my fingers to change radio stations or adjust the heat or a/c without needing to look down at all.
Now with modern touchscreens in cars, you can't do any of that. I have gotten used to playing with the radio via the steering wheel buttons, but anything else requires hunting around, looking for the correct spot to touch the screen.
And yet they say, "don't take your eyes off the road!"IR blaster for smartphones. I still have one on mine and I can use it for tons of stuff, not just as a TV remote.
I even worked for a company who made lots of IR based products (taps/faucets, accessibility stuff) and it was amazing how many people had to buy the dedicated remotes for these products for extra money.
When I asked them if their phone has an IR blaster, so they could just download a free app and use it instead. "I have an iPhone" was the most common answer.
There are small and cheap USB-C IR dongles around nowadays - generally USB-C has been a blessing for making additional hardware features available on smartphones.
My current phone does have IR - though I'm not really using it much since most of the existing Android software for that is horrible (broken, ad-infested, requires account and access to everything, ..), and I have too many open projects to start another one for writing my own software for that.
IR blasters were such a treat, still fucking hate when the remote stops working or the battery runs out
Buy Xiaomi phones.
I do have a Xiaomi phone and as I mentioned I am actively using the IR blaster, but the majority of regular users will not even think about checking the specs when buying new tech.
They will just go for the latest iPhone or the current trending android bestseller.
Pretty much everything the Galaxy S5 had
- Notification LED
- IR blaster
- Replaceable battery
- Headphone jack
- Heart rate monitor
- SD card slot
I currently use a FP3 which has 4 out of the 6 features above, which I feel is the best we'll get right now.
Admittedly the Heart rate monitor is more of a gimmick nowadays, especially that it's standard and automatic on most smartwatches and sports watches. Back then when stuff like the Sony Ericsson LiveView and LG W100 watches were popular, they did not have heart rate sensing built in
All that while being water resistant, let's not forget! What an amazing phone
What do you mean water resistant? Phone with replaceable battery and headphone jack can't be water resistant! /s
IR blaster was the shit. Back then, there was an app called beep and go (I think) that held the barcodes for your loyalty cards. For someone that collected them like baseball cards, it was really handy.
Anyway, Samsung actually had the ability to transmit the barcode via the IR blaster which some scanners could read if they couldn't read the barcode on the phone.
It was awesome!
I agree that the heart rate monitor was a bit of a gimmick though.
I used to fuck with friends with my "universal remote", and of course use my phone whenever i misplaced my own I miss that stupid feature the most
IR blaster! I miss that feature. When my wife was sick in the hospital they had a TV with 10 stupid channels. But I found that the TV had a USB post. So I used a flash drive and my phone as the remote to let her watch TV shows while she was stuck in bed.
Wait, Galaxy phones no longer have a SD slot??
Even their $120 tablet has that. Why the fuck doesn't a $1k phone have it?? 💩
Kinda surprised that no one has mentioned the FM tuner. For reasons I never really understood, a lot of companies continued to build the hardware into phones but then wall it off with firmware.
My first MP3 player had one, my TV had one, there were even watches and lots of other devices that had one. People still listen to radio, so why don't they give us a tuner?
Data sellers probably paid them to turn it off.
Mostly because they needed a wired headset to act as the FM antenna since it needs a decent length to capture FM compared to the much higher UHF and GHz frequencies that the mobile network uses.
They solved the ,issing FM tuner by pushing DAB+. (Yeah, + so users can't record from radio)
If the phone has a headphone jack, it probably has that FM tuner.
It is commonly a thing in budget mediatek devices
Are you sure the hardware is still there? I only ask because given the number of hackers out there, I'm surprised someone hasn't come out with a patch or something to make it more ubiquitous.
A lot of it isn’t there anymore….
But because it was a hardware thing, the patch would involve rooting your phone, something most people won’t do.
I don't know if they still have it, but this was a well-known problem for a long time.
i think I recall that the Bluetooth hardware is essentially an FM tuner. Just needed a wired headphone to use as an antenna. My Moto Stylus 2022 still has it.
It's not strictly there as a separate feature. Modern radio chips in phones are universal programmable radios, they can catch and process any wavelengths if you install correct code into them and plug a correct antenna. The same radio chip processes your 5G, Bluetooth, WiFi and everything else.
What phones are missing are FM antennas and radio firmware with FM support. This FM support is a paid feature for phone makers, so they don't add it.
Everything. We're down to barebones and marketing now focus solely on camera software updates or phone materials ("now with titanium!" How fucking sad is that?) And they are all selling the same phone.
Some of the most important loses...
Swappable batteries changed travel for me. Always having two extra charged batteries in my backpack, that you could swap top 100% in 20 seconds, made me ONLY use my phone as a free and completely useful tool without any planning or restrictions on my use. Otherwise, you can't take too many pictures or videos, stream music or video or make video calls too long or you might be fucked when you need phone, GPS, payment or to get a rideshare to where you're staying.
Audio jack similarly meant freedom. Bluetooth headphones out of battery, broken or one earbud lost? Have a pair of wired in the backpack always add backup. Also better audio quality through wired with DAC on certain models and less daily device load to charge/babysit
secondary screens LG V10 had a bar on top, they also had the T shaped dual screen phone and the secondary screen phone case. There was just creativity and attempts at innovation.
microSD expandable memory, again less and less available and this was about freedom - fuck your cloud storage add its data leaks, corruption and redaction. I own my data, you don't control it.
The notification light would also let you know what type of notification it was by colour on my old Samsung Note.
Wait they took that away? I have an S9 and I rely on this to know whos messaging me. Blue is textra, purple is whatsapp, white is insta, green is signal.
An app called aodNotify brings this back for you if you don't have an iPhone. May take a little tweaking to get everything how you want but it's very customizable
Sony still does that.
Fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone
It was literally a perfect design.
The phone was already on by the time it was at your face.
I am sad for its loss
I'm holding on to my Pixel 4a until it dies because of this.
Hard disagree here. Your fingers are already on the display to use your phone, fingerprint reader in the front makes far more sense.
Often my phone is on a table, all I need to unlock it is touch the screen. No need to pick it up.
I wouldn't buy a phone with the fingerprint reader in the back.
My phone is face down most of the time if it's sitting on a table. This turns on silent.
Mine has it on the side, also good.
Meh, I prefer it under the screen personally.
I forget which Samsung galaxy model it was, maybe S6, but it had a universal IR blaster built into the phone which was super convenient for controlling all of my devices. I did however often abuse the shit out of it by flipping the channels on bar tvs or turning off the stereo receiver and nobody was ever suspecting it was me on my phone. I guess that's probably why they removed it lol, but it was fun while it lasted.
Headphone jacks and small phones
I kinda of like big phones. Me and my poor eyesight enjoy being able to crank the text scale up without loosing too much screen real estate.
I picked up a Jelly Star which takes small to the extreme, and has a headphone jack
It's been good so far, minus the lack of 5G which means it won't work with my Android Auto adapter
I still miss my 4-4.5" phones... maybe dust pff the Moto G's that still work. (See if there is an update on Lineage images)
Mine still worked a couple of years ago but 8gb of storage doesn't get you very far these days.
A real keyboard and general tactile-oriented inputs. Touchscreens are okay as a supplement like in the DS or Samsung devices that have a pen, but touch-centered everything has never stopped being a frustrating user experience. Even worse is the way companies have embraced it for business use as well. Heavy industrial machinery should not come equipped with unintuitive little interfaces that are clearly an afterthought at best.
The other thing is the general desktop metaphors, and file/folder structure. The way that Android, and so many apps, hide the file system from the end user just leads to more confusion when the user needs to use a file manager to track down where those apps have actually stored data only to (maybe) find them in the most pointlessly obscure locations.
Headphone jack.
Rootable modable phones, with a 3.5mm headphone jack, SD card slot, and an ultrasonic fingerprint reader cherry on top. Maybe some heart rate monitor sprinkles if you are so inclined. My S10 that I still use checks all of the boxes minus root. It feels like I have a sundae with all the high quality toppings I could want... but no proper ice cream. And I want the whole custom sundae, which these days seems impossible to find.
Tactile buttons, all my homies hate cap-sense
My Sony Xperia 10iii still has that light as well as a heaphone jack, SD card slot that can be removed by hand (no ejector tool needed) and full waterproofing. These are literally all the features missing on newer phones. Plus it has a genuine 3 cameras: wide, ultrawide and telephoto - no fake "macro" BS here.
Best of all it's successor the Xperia 10v can be bought on the UK Sony site for just GBP299! Incredible price. But alas I don't live there but if one had a friend there you could have them order it send it to you via courier.
I too miss the LED notification light. If you have an amoled display, check this out:
Simplicity.
iPhones are far too big and have too many huge cameras for me. Everything requires a subscription or some login to do anything. Applications and operating systems are updated at the whims of CEOs while the job of UX designers is de-prioritized. Software updates keep breaking established workflows. I can no longer rely on devices or apps to maintain a consistent experience from one year to the next. It's just been years and years and years of disappointment and stress as technology changes for the worse.
All this is pushing me towards a more unplugged lifestyle. Which is a bit ironic given how it adds more complexity with the need to own and travel with more things. A bag of five 'things' that always work regardless of network connection is better than a little tablet that could crash or die or be updated at any moment and having a significant impact on your lifestyle.
There's just no fucking zen anymore. I feel like I'm living inside a simulation built by the same people who brought us Windows 95.
What's kinda crazy is we could reimplement the notification LED with blue OLED now just via software. Just no one has done it.
Edit: It's been done, but a quick Google search says it no longer works. I might get bored and write one.
Edit2: This one seems to be working fine for me.
Wouldn't that cause burn in?
It depends on what color you set and how often you make it stay lit. You can set a dim color (eg: dark blue) and the darker color you pick, the less it'll light up.
Android already has Always On Display and this merely taps into it. It seems it can't get brighter than what the system already allows.
I don't have a AOD enabled on my phone, but I'm pretty sure most AOD elements like this flash and/or move slightly to reduce risk of burn in.
Edit: by flash, I mean more of like "pulse" or "breathe".
That was one of my favorite features of the Nexus one. Didn't really need the track ball but being able to customize the color of notification light (I forget if that needed root or not) based on app was great. I'm guessing it must have been persistent blinking otherwise my current edge lighting notification would scratch the same itch, couldn't be just nostalgia on my part...
I was not able to find one for iphone
All the reviews seem to say it doesn't work on p6pro. What phone do you use?
Pixel 8
In the gaming sector, nothing has adequately replicated the stylus used by the DS, 3DS, and Wii U. It was the best way to play a few signature games like Elite Beat Agents (now incarnated as Osu) and Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Touchscreens are just a bit too universal and resilient for us to go back to them.
Headphone jack. Next to my bed is the one good Bluetooth headset, the two crappy backup sets for when it is charging, and the gigantic earmuff yardwork set for when the good one is still charging and the 2 shit ones have already died.
Just buy a dongle and you can use regular headphones.
Every single phone I've owned dongles stop working eventually while charging still works fine.
Just buy a dongle
Soooo sick of this "let them eat cake" bullshit.
Get the Fiio BTR5. It costs about $100 and has Quad-DAC from ESS just like one used in flagship LG phones. It can switch between Bluetooth and USB inputs, so you can use standard headphones to do phone calls wirelessly for example.
That's gotta be the slowest charging imaginable. 0.00001 Watts?
Less of a feature and more of a design, but I miss phones being small. The iPhone 4S was the perfect physical size IMO and that thing looks tiny compared to my fuckhuge S23U. The physical bloat of the past 5 Galaxys is why I've decided not to go with Samsung for my next mobile
But why did you buy the Ultra then? I have a S22 and it's just the right size (hell, even slightly smaller would still be nice).
You could have just gotten the normal S23?
They probably have their reasons. Still doesn't justify almost every phone being too big. whether it's 10% too big or 50% too big it's still too big.
Seconding this. I can appreciate a large screen but it has limits, if I can’t use my phone with one hand because my fingers can’t reach half the screen while palm holding it the design sucks. Sent from my unwieldy modern smart phone force using both hands.
Yep. I've been looking for my next phone for when my pixel 5 eventually goes and looking at Asus as it's the only current high end phone that's not bigger that 5".
I do not want a 6"-7" display. I want a 4"-5" display I can easy get in and out of my pocket, and be able to hold and use with one hand. Even a 5" screen is to big for my thumb to reach about 1/4 of the screen without moving my hand.
If you have access to an iPhone 4S, then try to use it for as couple of minutes, and then see if you still consider that 3.5 inch screen perfect size.
If you want a tiny phone, then why use the biggest one available? It's like saying I wish I could get a small economic car, and then drive a Humvee.
Apparently when it comes down to it, you don't really want a tiny phone.I do and it's perfect.
why use the biggest one available
Because the biggest are often the top models and at the time that I bought this one, my job required a powerful mobile. The battery bypass feature, exclusive to the S23U, alone made it a non-choice.
You're making a lot of assumptions in your comment about me, what my workload on a mobile is, and my own tastes.
I’m on an iPhone 13 Mini — probably the last Mini model ever.
I like the form factor, but you really do notice the smaller battery. Most days, I’m at 20% by bedtime. If I run anything even semi-intensive throughout the day, I need a pit stop. I miss not worrying about it.
Main reason I stopped buying Motorola was the ever increasing screen size. I have bad elbows and extended phone use causes pain. A few ounces really does make a difference. A sub-5-inch phone with decent specs would be awesome.
Good keyboards on computers. At the office, everything are those extremely uncomfortable $5 dell keyboards. At a climbing gym or pool, the liability iPads that you sign forms on is using those really uncomfortable apple keyboards too.
I miss the better keyboards that we had back 25 years ago. Modern box jades bring some of that back for your own PC.
Memory card slots.
I can tolerate a missing headphone jack, a non replaceable battery, but a missing memory card slot is just too much.
At the moment, the only non Chinese brand of phones that includes this slot are Samsung I think. And even then, certain models also include it.
A few Motorola and Sony phones as well as the Fairphone still have them as well.
Motorola is Chinese they are owned by Lenovo
One big technical reason for this was actually the file system. Back when phones came with various types of sd-card support, they only had a few gigs of storage. fat32 was enough and was supported everywhere. But fat32 had some file system limitations and when sd-card sizes grew over 4gb there were comparability issues since windows was limited to fat32 and ntfs. I can imagine the support hell when a user couldn’t mount the sd card containing photos on his or her computer.
I'm sad that popup front cameras didn't catch on. I only remember 2 or 3 phones that had them. For me it's the perfect compromise - this way you can make an end to end screen without the need for a notch, and since I very rarely use the front camera, I wouldn't be too concerned about the durability of the popup mechanism. The only real downside I see is that it complicates waterproofing.
Things in general used to be made to last / hard to break.
That's survivorship bias for sure
The Nexus One had so many features I miss:
Trackball for scrolling
Notification light built into the trackball with customizable colors depending on the app
Back plate came off, replaceable battery
Small and a one handed wonder, the trackball kept my fingers off the screen
It was a replacement for my jail broken iPhone OG, such a better interface for me than the iPhones and it had very basic multitasking when the other guys could only do one app at a time
Edit: Formatting
For real, you sold me on that trackball. That sounds like the coolest feature a phone could have, right down to the multi-color led built in beneath it. I really really hope we see a return to something like that! Touch screens are very useful and have their place but physical buttons/controls are usually preferred when done properly. Here's a pic of the Nexus 1, that trackball indeed appears to be cool as fuck:
Oh hey, it's my 2nd smartphone ever. How nostalgic! This phone was built like an absolute tank. It really was a great little phone.
That said, the problem with physical controls is that you either need a larger device or smaller screen to accommodate them. For most people, the tradeoff just isn't worth it.
For a while, I bemoaned the loss of the physical button bar. Having four (!) indicator lights was really useful to boot. Now I happily use gestures with no looking back.
Would be nice to still see some phones offer this for those who want them, though.
I thought the digital trackball of the HTC Incredible was cool as shit. It was my favorite phone and I would still be using it today (not as a phone) if it didn't have a restart bug that HTC refused to acknowledge.
Oh yes the notification light was incredible. I had one on my Pixel 2 XL. I just switched phones like a week ago to a Nord N200 and it doesn't have one. Not too big of a deal though.
I wish phones still had IR blasters but those are long gone. It would be awesome to control my Edifier speakers with my phone as a remote control.
Edifier RC10E (Unofficial remote control for Edifier R1280DB speakers) https://f-droid.org/packages/ir.remote.edifier.rc10e/
Edit: Also how about a good camera? All mid range and low end phones today have like 3 or 4 mediocre cameras because it looks fancier then having 1 nice camera.
The ability to reach every part of the screen with the thumb on the hand holding it
A lot of what I'm seeing here is included on my Sony Xperia.
Headphone jack, notification light, SD card.
I do miss having a replaceable battery like my older LG phones had and stereo fromt-firing speakers like my HTC One M8.
Replaceable battery is gonna be mandatory for phones in the future so that's good.
This is why I still buy Sony. If they don't change this, plus add replaceable batteries, which they have to... most is good.
Still miss FM radio, though.
And double tap to wake.
I miss phone bodies being plastic. Sure, metal feels premium but you can't drop your phone without leaving a permanent mark on it. Not to mention how stupid the idea of having glass background is. These days it's hard to see a phone whose glass is not messed up.
To be honest, peak design for me was Samsung's Galaxy S2. I loved that device. Thin, very light, perfect size for my hands. I'd kill for something like that but upgraded to modern standards. I'd also love to see devices with physical keyboard. I waited for BB Key3 to come out when they decided to discontinue the line. Ended up with yet another Samsung device.
A built-in scripting language. The TI-83 line of calculators have an app programming language that requires you to side-load code from another computer, but they also have TI-BASIC, which allows you to write a wide variety of scripts right on the calculator itself. This should be standard on all 'smart' devices. It's so stupid to have gigahertz of computing power in your pocket and not be able to do anything without writing the app on another machine.
I know Termux for Android exists and that's a good start, but I'd like to see something baked right into the OS that has access to all my device's cool sensors and gizmos. The camera, the microphone, the aux port, the usb port, the accelerometer, the bluetooth antenna... all of those things should be exposed to the user. This would be a really good use case for 'visual' programming ala Scratch, since you could assemble a script right from a touch screen instead of having to plug in a keyboard.
My 2001 flip phone could schedule sms messages to be sent and it took smartphones a decade ish to add that feature.
Buttons.
Full qwerty keyboard. I know I am a minority. I don't need more screen estate, I need to be able to make notes in my diary whithout looking on the screen and not bumping into things while I am walking. I've tried the Uniherz offers, but the OS and the quality is really sub-par. I've jumped on the Astroslide train, but the manufacturing batches went south over the Covid and I don't blame the Astro guys for not getting my device. Some US company did buy the BlackBerry licence and I was ready to pay any price for their phone - but they failed to manufacture anything. If only you could jailbreak BlackBerry Key 2 - I'd be carrying it proudly around till today. (written on Google Pixel 6 runnning Graphene with a collabsible pocket bluetooth keyboard - so I can type at least while I am not moving - best among terrible options).
I loved the old Windows CE phones. You got a dpad, buttons on the front, and side buttons. All frequently used apps were instant at the button press. No nonsense of turning on phone, unlock, look carefully before clicking app on touch screen because you can't physically feel the button.
Samsung blackjack Ii was the peak of cell phone innovation.
I miss tether points. We have these super expensive, slippery devices and we have to stick something like a pop socket onto them to be able to get a good grip on them. I used to have these little dangly thumb loops that if I dropped my phone, it would just dangle there instead of slamming into the ground. It's very minor, but I don't understand why they don't have them anymore.
My phone is 4 years old and this sounds like a horror story to me. I have no idea what I'm going to do next.
Replace the battery and use it for 4 more years.
I had to use my Moto G5s Plus again for 2 weeks when my current phone (Poco X3 Pro) was broken. It made me realize how usable it could still be, it's just that the battery is basically dead. Also the micro-USB connector is so worn it doesn't work with some cables anymore, and it is soldered-on. Well, OK, there's a few more problems. It only has 32GB of storage, screen gets burn-ins within 3 minutes now, the main camera's focus is mostly non-functional (it just makes weird noise while shaking the view, but if you hit it just right it can be used), it's very laggy, it keeps losing cell signal,...
OK, it does have a few more issues, but I could still use it if both the micro-USB and battery were fine. The bezels and navigation button/fingerprint scanner are a large enough positive. But I can't do micro soldering. I don't even have money for a soldering heat gun...
Man I did this to my S10, forgot, dropped it in water. Bummer. I wanted to have it at least 5 more years.
I'm still using my '18 Nokia 6.1 and '16 Samsung Tab S2 8". As phone I see no alternative apart from fairphone, haven't found an alternative yet for the 8" tablet. (There are no 8" left it seems)
Main tablet is a Lineage running Samsung Tab S5e, no alternative found for that. No 10" (or slightly larger) tablet that has an alternative rom. (Or one I can start developing for with another device as base)
Durability, battery life, repairability.
Replaceable battery, micro SD card slots are hard to come by these days, too.
Physical buttons.
My trusty old Psion Series 5 was an awesome pocket computer that would run for three weeks on two AA batteries!
It also had a large touch screen and a clever physical keyboard that was just large enough for ten-finger typing.
I used it for 15 years, it was amazing and no smartphone ever came close.
Aren't notification LEDs somewhat obsolete now that we have always on displays? One advantage could be that they are less power hungry than keeping the screen / touch panel alive all the time. But in theory one could just create a permanent "notification LED" with an always on display, then it's the same thing from a user's perspective.
Snake, I spent way too much time on it.
For me the Galaxy Nexus was the peak of enthusiast phone joy. Notification LED was bright and colorful, replaceable battery (to be fair, this was necessary because battery life was so short), unlocked by default, slightly curved front glass made it a pleasure to use as a phone. I also liked the ceramic back of the Essential Phone. The back fingerprint sensors on most phone models were so much more practical than the in-screen options and provided a handy way to lower the notification tray. I miss the litltle touch navigation nubbin on my Droid Incredible, which was handy for scrolling around without touching the screen.
I also miss how open Android was; Google has been gradually cracking down on enthusiast use cases in the name of "security" like text backup no longer being possible for Play Store apps, email access locked down (requiring a security audit for apps to access GMail), scoped storage screwed up a lot of use cases as well.
5.25 inch drive bays on computer cases.
I know most people here knock the always on display, but my Samsung has the option to only show if I tap the screen or a notification comes through. I also use the option that blinks a certain color light around the perimeter of the screen and/or the in screen camera so it effectively simulates that old led.
For me it's this (the color coded notification LED on phones) and while on the topic of phones I used to have a xiaomi phone several years ago that had an infrared face unlock feature so you could use face unlock in complete darkness. Haven't had a phone with that before or after. It was awesome.
Actual keyboards, my Moto Droid was my favorite phone I've ever owned. Miss it so much. I'd give anything to have an updated version of it.
Graphic design with depth or shading.
for what it’s worth, you can make your phone’s flashlight serve the same purpose as those old notification lights. more harsh and no colors, but it’ll get your attention
Not really, because to see that, you have to put your phone with the screen down on the table. That both ruin the quiet mode function, and increases risk of wear of the screen glass from hard surfaces.
Plus it's fucking distracting to see students' phones blinking throughout the classroom
Giving me annoying audible notifications that my battery is low. We moved to batteries that degrade when lower than ~40% and got rid of the notifications that let us know your battery is dead..
Recent phone do not have notification light? I am still using my phone from 2019 and it has it.
Headphone Jack.
Privacy
Everything apple and Samsung helped remove from phones to squeeze more pennies out of their customers. Headphone jack, micro SD card slot, ir blaster..... etc
Ooh I'd have to say an IR blaster, before switching to an S23 Ultra, my Huawei P20 Pro had one and a notification light. Didn't realise how much I used the IR blaster until it was gone.
AodNotify almost replaced the LED for me. It always locked up my display black every few days so had to stop using it.
I use it with no issues. Pixel 3 though, maybe it doesn't sit well with newer hardware/software
I also miss the little light
Of course the 3.5mm headphone jack, but also IR Blasters.
I don't really miss 3.5mm, neither do I miss SD card slots. I don't even miss replaceable batteries and all that stuff. But I do sincerely miss good devices with physical keyboards. Damn I wish Blackberry came back for a good flagship.
Rechargable bat-trees, the headphone jack, nugget shaped phones (ie. BlackBerry Bold much), and the damn hardware keyboard >:(((
My current Xiaomi phone has an IR blaster, but what I miss is having an IR receiver as well, trying 100 random remotes to find which one works with your obscure TV/AC is such a pain when you used to be able to just clone one instead.
IR led, useful to use your phone as a remote control for various non-connected hardware
Suddenly I feel very happy (and a little bit smug) about my 2 year old Sony Xperia which both a notification LED, headphone jack and micro SD card slot.
But a replacable battery is sorely lacking..
I think I'll go with the latest Fairphone when my current needs replacement, but I'm a bit worried about it's lack of water resistance
Free and easily added custom ringtones
Being able to use my phone as a remote control for TV's that was so awesome. Could mess with TV's at bars and never had to look for the remote lol
Existing. I feel every gadget has either become a phone app or an integrated sensor inside the phone (while losing precision because of not being a dedicated device).
What modern gadgets? All that's left are cell phone tracking devices
Those tiny solar cells calculators used to have
Rewind! None of my devices have a rewind feature any more and it’s driving me crazy!
Nobody needs bazillion cameras, a range finder, laser focuses and shit that's needs to be in a professional camera hardware in a phone. You just need total of 2 cameras and a decent hardware. I don't want to pay for a extra N cameras in a phone.
Also what the fuck happened to changeable batteries. I had a Samsung note 4 and used that shit until 2019 when I broke it ( had some anger issues that year). Waterproof dust proof excuses can go have an intercourse with their phones. I used that phone in 6 different countries and all kind of weather nothing happened to it.
Um, like 85% of my work and 40% of my hobbies utilize those features extensively so, yes, people do need those things. Literally for science. Them being baked into base design keeps costs down on tiny budgets. It also helps out students and citizen scientists who don't have to go buy specialized gear- it's already on whatever they have.
It's to make you buy a new phone. Battery is dead/not holding a charge all day? Time to get a new phone!
Fucking planned obsolescence!!!
I actually use the rangefinding and other cameras quite a lot and im not anywhere near professional. The other day I took some measurements of my bike all through my camera without having to figure out weird geometries with a tape measurer. I can also use it to measure rooms to see if furniture will fit and conversely i can measure furniture on the fly. I had my doubts about using it at first but its suprisingly accurate
I don't use them and I'm pretty sure overwhelming percentage of the user base doesn't use them either. Because I've yet to see an argument I'm buying this phone because it has a range finder. All these extra cameras hardware are forced onto us because of the social media/selfie craze. As for your personal usage case I can understand you're using range finder and measuring options but they are not utilizing different cameras. They are using phone sensors like gyroscope, acceleration, gps and algorithms not your different cameras.
As a side note you yourself admit that it's not something you needed but found out and did even trust it.
The reason for all the lens's on the back is technical. They can't put a regular camera lens so they use multiple ones each with different focus ranges.
Even using a regular DSLR you need to swap lenses for different situations.
They are not interchangeable lens's though are they? They are literally different camera modules with different optics. When you're talking about a camera (not a phone) that makes sense. I'm not buying a camera am I? I'm buying a phone so all those optics and camera modules are forced on me to purchase when buying a smart phone. That's the state of today's smart phone market.
While the LED notification light was awesome, it is something that I don't really need. I also don't need a removal battery because my battery life has been extremely good and I'll replace my phone before the battery goes bad. I don't need wireless charging. My phone had that years ago but it's kind of a gimmick, especially when a phone can charge up in about an hour and a half from dead. I don't need a 3.5 mm headphone jack because I don't use wired headphones, I have Bluetooth headphones but they rarely get used.
I'm about to lose non-swappable batteries.
It's going to be garbage. Screw the EU on this one.
What? You don't want replaceable batteries?
Absolutely not. They'll be less capacity, bring back the shitty flimsy back covers, and have the covers sliding off and on like it's 2013.
It costs $15 plus the battery ($75 for official Google shit) and a half hour of time every three years to replace a battery.
I'll take the integrated offering every time. Fuck the EU and this ineffective grandstanding. Everyone is still going to buy a new phone every two years.
I'll be happy if phones don't suck going back to removable but I won't hold my breath.
If anything, this thread kind of shows how much people fail to get informed about their smartphone before they buy one.
Literally every single one of these features is available on the market. Most of those phones are actually the quality stuff, like the German produced Gigaset/Volla, or the Dutch (assembled?) Fairphone. But no, you have to go out of your way to get the bottom of the barrel Iphone and Samsung made in China.