Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most?
https://www.androidauthority.com/poll-abandoned-phone-features-you-miss-3581569/Open linkView original on piefed.zip310
Comments360https://www.androidauthority.com/poll-abandoned-phone-features-you-miss-3581569/Open linkView original on piefed.zip
Open bootloaders, ir blaster, 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, replaceable batteries. The list goes on.
Don't forget the notification light.
The most bullshit thing ever. I have a Moto 5g Ace, I was sad it didn't have a light, used it for a couple years before putting LineageOS on it. Low and behold it actually has a notification light that was disabled in the stock ROM! WTF
Yeah, and unless it's only activating a few pixels at a time it's not the same.
This is more or less how oled works iirc
It's how it can work, which doesn't necessarily mean the firmware is set up to use it that way.
The notification light for me was never all that useful, i have unique ringtones for everything but i do agree they are an awesome feature for folks in spaces where their phones need to be quiet
I liked them, if not just because there's no reason not to have it. It was always subtle and functional.
Why can’t the camera “flash” be used for this? IOS has settings for it in accessibility features.
You know? That's a good question. I wouldn't think it would be very hard to just do a minor redesign of the flash LED to do that.
The flash pattern and frequency were set different for email, sms and other. On mine at least. It was really handy not needing to turn the screen on at all.
Motorola G series has 3.5mm + SD card slot
Hmmm, that's deffo a contender for my next device, we'll see how many years i get out of my zf9 before getting one though lol
OnePlus make phones that still have many of those features
I was pleasantly surprised when my OnePlus 13 had an IR blaster.
Some chinese phones still have ir blasters
Is any of that an android feature? It's mostly hardware, I think you can still get devices that have some combination of those (maybe not the IR blaser).
Title says "android phone", not just Android
Most manufacturers dropped all or most of those features.
The physical fingerprint reader on the back of the phone.
Curiously, why on the back?
I always found that a worse location than phones that had it on the side (usually paired with the power button), as you can't unlock your phone if it's lying flat on a table without picking it up.
(Also the way I typically hold my phone, the usually top centre sensor is absolutely nowhere near where any of my fingers naturally sit, and requires awkward bending to reach it)
I know a lot of people like it, but I've never been able to figure out what it was about it.
Im not OP, bit i loved my old phone with a rear fingerprint scanner. It was perfectly positioned to unlock with my index finger AS I was pulling it out of my pocket. And you could scroll up/down with it.
I do not like the power button fingerprint reader.
The 2nd and even 3rd point is not automatically true for every phone and setting. I have a combined fingerprint reader and power button on my Fairphone 5, and the 2nd thing has always worked just fine.
It also has the option to only enable the fingerprint reader if the display is on, which addresses your 3rd point completely. It means you can pick the phone up, including having a finger in the reader, and it won't turn on or unlock. You need to press down in the button to trigger the screen, then it can be unlocked. That also means that when locking it and turning off the screen actively by pressing the power button with the phone on, it never re-unlocks. To be honest this part wasn't a problem before the setting became available, as the locking would disable the fingerprint reader anyway, but letting your grip go slightly could trigger re-unlock.
Only activating the fingerprint reader when the screen is on is a regression compared to the rear reader. It means I need to squeeze the phone to unlock it, vs just placing my finger in the right spot. It also negates the purported advantage from the comment above mine about being able to easily unlock the phone while lying on a table.
I'm not arguing that the power button reader doesn't work for anyone. I'm saying that it is qualitatively worse UX for me in particular.
My eldest's phone has this. Your second point is valid and a pain in the ass.
I don't see why that's a problem.
Sounds like you just had a shitty phone, that shouldn't happen.
Again, shitty phone. You're supposed to actually push the button to unlock it. Don't understand why your finger would be on the back of the phone when putting it in your pocket anyway.
This isn't a "shitty phone" thing. Every phone I've owned with a side-mounted fingerprint reader has unlocked via touch (not press). It's standard.
Again, we were talking about the back.
Yes it is. Once again, we were talking about on the back.
I’d pull it out of my pocket with my finger naturally on the back side and it would be unlocked by the time I viewed the screen.
Lots of android phones have a physical fingerprint reader
On the side isn't good enough?
Their preference was the back. So no.
To me it sounded like the main distinction they were trying to make was a dedicated fingerprint reader button rather than an in-screen finger print reader. This is a common preference because the hardware scanner you can activate by touch without working about proper placement, whereas the in-screen readers you have to look at the screen and carefully put your finger just in the on-screen circle showing where you have to precisely place your finger
I just want the LG G5 back. It had a(n):
And a ton of other stuff. Truly the best android phone ever made
Closest I can find now is the Ulefone line (no removable battery) but I have no idea if they're decent phones or not.
Think I had a LG G3 I miss it. Wish they would of kept making phones.
Samsung xcover 6 pro
Had one of those, but it eventually died. Great phone.
These things are still in most modern phones.--
You'd be surprised at how many phones don't have enough accelerometers to know their full orientation in space. Compass, NFC, and barometer are also not givens.
This thread is just a reminder of how terrible phones have become.
Strangely it's usually only the cheap phones that include these premium features.
Where they gimp the screen, CPU, RAM, etc and then point to their low sales to claim people dont want things like a removable battery, SD card, headphone jack, etc or else they'd be buying them more. I hate it so much.
Of how spoiled capitalism has become.
I liked the little led light at the top that would blink for notification
I miss just being able to take it out and have no phone for however long I want. Didn't drain the battery, didn't worry about the phone.
It does compromise the waterproofing to open and close phones, even cases. But fuck you, let me make my own mistakes, your job is to engineer things to be better and fit my needs, not just give up and charge more and strip features and invade my privacy and spy on me with psyops and try to control my life. I'm a customer, not a user.
There were several waterproof phones with removable batteries back in the S5 era
It's because the U.S. Government can make it seem as if your phone is powered down, but it's actually still on and spying on you, sending data to whatever alphabet agency wants it. Removing the battery is the only defense against that attack, so they 'encouraged' manufacturers to stop allowing it.
Sounds like a dumb conspiracy. Especially since Fairphone sells in the US.
More likely is that manufacturers want to make more money so they make their phones more difficult to repair so customers have to pay them to get a battery replaced.
I blame Apple
You can believe what you want. I didn't hear it from a conspiracy theorist, I heard it from Edward Snowden, and this was actually old news when he mentioned it, but his revelation on national TV made it even more widely known. "Coincidentally" it was right around the time Snowden blew the whistle that Android manufacturers started switching over to non-replaceable batteries.
Yes Apple are greedy fucks and it's obvious that forcing iPhone users to get their phones repaired by a 'genius' was a part of their strategy from the beginning. But Android manufacturers who didn't have a repair store they could force their users to use and wouldn't benefit from that were happy to continue letting users replace their own batteries, because it was a legitimate benefit for the consumer and way to differentiate themselves from Apple.
I'm sure that phone manufactures save a few pennies by forcing users to either buy a new phone or pay an expensive repair bill, but I'm pretty sure that isn't the only reason it's done.
Edit: Even if you ignore their ability to wiretap you when your phone is 'powered off', the fact remains that the government can and does track you by you cell phone and removing the battery is a great way to stop that.
Of course, it's not the only way- If you feel like you don't want to be tracked for any reason a Faraday bag is a decent option. It makes your phone less useful, but so would removing the battery.
Non replaceable batteries benefit android manufacturers as it simplifies manufacturing. And they dont care about repairs post warranty... thats just incentive to buy another one. You dont need a grand conspiracy to explain that.
That was true from 2006-2016 as well, but most Android manufacturers still offered user replaceable batteries. If you believe that there is no correlation- that's fine. I don't buy it though, the timing is just too perfect for it to be a coincidence.
You know its a really easy to prove against, right? Just have some basic radio spectrograph to detect any signals coming from a turned off phone.
In reality, the correlation is phones continue to get thinner, making it near impossible to create a battery and battery connector small enough and still be resistant to a 200lb ape handling it.
Why would I need to prove it? You didn't read any of the articles I linked to did you? The fact that they have the ability to do this is not even a question. The government admitted that it was able to do this all the way back in 2006.
The claim isn't that the FBI/NSA/CIA/ICE whoever is doing this constantly to everybody, it's that they have the capability to do this to anybody, which again isn't even a question. I'm not really worried about being spied on personally (yet) and even if I were I'd just leave my phone at home or put it in a Faraday bag, I'm not going to carry around a 'basic radio spectrograph' and whip it out every time I want to have a private conversation.
Lol, that's like saying I lost weight because I bought smaller pants. Yeah, designers are able to make phones thinner when they are able to design around non-replaceable batteries. Was anyone asking for thinner phones? They had the ability to make thinner phones by disallowing replaceable batteries for a decade and did not.
Were consumers demanding that phone manufactures make phones worse by removing useful features like replaceable batteries or headphone jacks- or was these anti-features foisted upon us?
If it had been just some manufactures that switched, or if those manufacturers that did switch had offered the option of different models, some with replaceable batteries and some without, and then consumers chose the worse phones- I might not be as convinced.
As it is now with 99.9% of all phones you can buy not even giving you the option, I'm not buying it.
It's not like this is some crazy off the wall theory. I'm not saying the Earth is flat or we didn't land on the moon. We know that the government is using our cell phones to track us, we know they have the capabilities to do so. The only question is did governments (I guarantee it's not just the U.S) make deals with/ask/or put pressure on manufactures to incentivize the switch. That's not really far fetched at all.
The smaller size phones (I hate these Phablets,) 3.5mm jack and back finger print reader, (although my Pixel 4a5G has them, it will be the last,) replaceable batteries, and selfie camera that doesn't take up screen real estate.
no but genuinely this. My phone has the same screen size as my nintendo switch, and I'm unironically supposed to fit that in my pocket and have it be comfortable
I'm always shocked at how big the Nintendo switch was, and yet had such a small screen. I remember the first time I wondered, and held my galaxy s9 plus up to the screen and was like "holy shit it's the same size - how is the switch so much bigger and looks so much worse?"
That being said, I do support the idea of multiple sizes of phones for people that want different things. Let there be iPhone 1 or 2 size phones for people that want something convenient and small, and give me a 10 incher because I like that and need it in my life :) Also, well-balanced, front-facing stereo speakers for fucks sake. Stop doing this weird one-forwards one-out stuff, Samsung, it sounds like shit.
https://www.unihertz.com/
I don't work for them, I just happen to like the idea that there is a phone company making smaller sized phones, phone with physical keyboards, etc.
IB4 the comments complaining about android versions and such. Yes, I get it. Some of them are still running android 11, yes that is a security risk. Could be though that the people that want a small form factor phone also don't want to do banking or other financially related things on it as well.
I feel like the two groups of people that just want to make phonecalls and texts, but who also just want a small phone, have a lot of overlap.
They are most likely a circle lol.
I've have Samsung phones for a long time, and I've come to accept that I suck at typing with a virtual keyboard. So I think my next phone will be a Titan 2, or hopefully a Titan 2 slim since the 2 seems to be pretty big.
Pixel 5 has a back fingerprint reader. Think it's the last Pixel with it.
I miss that.
My 5 died randomly one day. The 9 under screen sensor works nice, heard the 6-8? light sensors were bad.
What's wrong with the light sensor?
It's the under-screen fingerprint sensor. It's kind of flaky, and it shines the sensor area of the screen at what's gotta be greater than normal max screen brightness. It's blinding at night.
It's also much less reliable than the back reader in my old pixel 2, though it's gotten better with software updates. It was barely functional when the 6 first came out.
Only the optical sensors do this. The newer ultrasonic fingerprint sensors are more accurate and don't require any light/brightness changes.
So I've heard! My 6 has the light, and while I've gotten accustomed to it, I'm not a fan.
I love misplacing my finger and getting flash-banged by my phone! 😮💨
Phablets, lmao. You invoke the ancient magicks.
I'm so far on the opposite side on this one though - I always have preferred large screen devices and today, I ADORE my folding pocket tablet most of all. 😍
Unimpeded root. You can still get it on maybe a handful of phones but apps are getting harder and harder to run with it enabled.
As someone who currently has a new phone with root and an sd-card slot, this was a fun read.
What phone is that?
Fairphone 6
I run CalyxOS and I tried again recently and it DOES work
How recently? In May Google changed everything about root detection so it may have changed again.
Plexus has a few people claiming it works from the last months though.
I was playing today
I liked the notification LEDs that some of the nexus phones used to have, you could customize the color / flashing pattern per contact.
I use AODNotify, which lights up a ring around the front camera. It's pretty configurable, maybe check it out.
Thanks! Playing around with it right now
I had a phone with this and I loved the hell out of it. Could tell at a glace if a notification was for an email, text, or voice call without opening the phone. Could also set a custom color for, say, a text from my wife.
Yes, I was gonna say this one too but it was like 2010 on a phone that had a physical keyboard. You could set it to flash for notifications - yellow for missed calls, green for texts, blue for an app. A simpler time
The trackball that had the customizable notification LED under it on the Nexus One was so damned cool. Since it was raised up and I had work emails, texts, personal emails, and GTalk all on distinct colors, I could tell from across the room whether it was worth even grabbing my phone.
Nothing has these 'glyph' lights, but software support for them seems to be pretty limited (not that I've looked too deep, all these modern phones are just boring). I hope they can come up with more controls for them, hardware seems to support quite complex patterns.
no headphone jack is shitty but god i fucking loathe typing on a touchscreen keyboard
Replaceable battery. No contest.
Replaceable battery
AUX plug
Expandable storage by SD card
Did I say replaceable battery already?
Edit: oh and non-edged screens (the roundings on the side, don't know the official name... But it sucks and almost all flagship phones have them, or at least when I bought mine 3 years ago, don't know about now tbh)
Control over it.
Audio jack 3.5mm!!! I'm sick of buying USBC to audio jack adaptors! Just add a damn audio jack! IR for remote control.
Since they break
What adapter do you use? Seriously, I am open to paying more for an adapter once instead of buying cheap adapters over and over.
I don't lean either way on the headphone jack debate. But a friend insisted that cheapness was one of the main reasons he preferred wired headphones. Bluetooth ones were too expensive and he kept losing or destroying them. Definitely a him problem but replacing cheap headphones was easier and the dongle was just another layer of expense to deal with if the phone didn't have a jack.
Because they break.
Whether is a Samsung or apple adapter, after some time it won't function, and it's always the cable.
I have to buy be proper one, on plastic.
Ps: they cost 10cad.
Blinking LED when I got a text
Customizable notification led color!
I miss my Google Nexus 5
The core apps (like messaging, and calendar) being free software and open source.
headphone jack mostly because it was the most consumer unfriendly decision removed purely to make phone companies more money
The feature where you can hold the phone comfortably in one hand and without having to do any gymnastics to reach the top corner.
I bought a new phone somewhat recently. My main feature request was small. There were 0 options, so I ended up with one that's 50% larger than my last phone.
My eyes work fine. I don't need a huge screen. I just want something that I can hold.
I also don't need a razor thin phone. More battery capacity is an acceptable compromise for added durability and not hurting my hand.
I found my old S4 active the other day, it fit so much better in my hand than my current OnePlus. You basically need to use a pop or a ring or something attached to the case to use a phone one handed anymore. And they just straight don't make new small android devices.
Don't know if all androids have it, but if I swipe down near the bottom, it'll pull down the top for "one-handed mode".
I was able to trigger it multiple times until I figured out how I actually did it 😅
4.7" screen is the ideal size for me. Big enough to see anything clearly, small enough that I can comfortably reach anything in the screen with one hand
Being able to take out the battery so that I can swap it with a pre-charged one. Those were great times. Then you can just throw the nearly-dead one on the charger.
This is identical to having the super power of being able to restart your phone to get a full battery charge.
At this time, the 3.5mm jack is top with 27%
Wired does not mean "old", it means faster, more reliable, better for the environment and cheaper too! In the time that some very affordable studio headphones last me, I'd have to buy about 5 or so similarly priced BT headphones or 10 pairs of true wireless ear buds. Turns out adding complexity to a device and powering it with a non replaceable battery makes it way less reliable and worse for the environment. On top of that, wireless almost always implies audio compression. (but in fairness that won't be noticeable for everyone) Imho a headphone jack should still be a "must have" for smartphones.
That and there was no reason to kill it other than to sell BT headphones (constantly).
Somehow we had enough space and all back when phones were 4" at most. But now that theyre 6"+ somehow we just don't have room..
USB-C ports get damaged over time by excessive unplug/replug in that use case
There's a reason it's still the top requested feature in the poll.
I charge my phone once a day.
I use my jack 3-4 times a day on average.
Audio jack is still better, as someone else said in another comment: https://feddit.uk/post/33629763/19026566
It is inconvenient to leave an adapter connected to my headphones, because I want to use the same pair of headphones for my tablet, computer, and Switch, all of which have a real headphone jack. I also need to buy an extra adapter for the aux cable in the car and constantly have to debug if it is the audio cable or adapter that is going bad.
Rear fingerprint scanner PLEASE
I'm hanging on to my pixel 5 for this reason. And the smaller form factor.
I'd forgotten all about the notification LED. I wonder, could you flash a small part of an OLED display to achieve something similar while still being low power?
I loved it. I set up all these different colors to tell me what the priority was for checking. SMS was green, email was yellow or something, and FB (so cool back then) was blue. I really miss that, could just glance at it and know if it was worth risking pulling out your phone in school
Miss this too. And you could customize the number of flashes so 3 rapid green flashes was so-and-so's WhatsApp message.
Samsung S21 absolutely has a multicolour notification LED, but the only time it gets used is POST.
My problem with that is that I use a phone cover. Flashing a light on the side of the phone however could be great.
finger print scanner being on the back of the phone not under the screen. and headphone jack
don't be evil.
I really wish IR blasters would come back into style. They're not even expensive to manufacture, and they're small enough that they can be incorporated into any modern smartphone design pretty easily. And almost everybody with a smartphone has SOMETHING in their home that they control with an IR remote. There's basically no reason to have stopped including them.
Ah yes, let me just pull out my phone, unlock, open remote app, switch to 'my tv/air-conditioning manufacturer' profile and press off.
The IR experience on a phone is not convenient for day to day, especially when (love it or hate it) most things can be controlled over WiFi without needing line of sight.
Ah yes, let me scrounge around for the remote someone else in my ADHD household last had in their hand 45 minutes ago and has no idea what they did with it.
Meanwhile, my small child is coming downstairs for a glass of water while we're watching Hereditary for the first time. The Roku app is a pile of garbage and won't connect to my device fast enough, it just shows loading animations. So I just have to cut the power to the TV while I look for the remote.
Hypothetically, of course.
Just because you can't imagine a scenario where it's convenient doesn't mean they don't exist.
Lock screen widgets are a thing now.
You really gonna put a tv remote on your lockscreen?
Yeah, that's how I had my old HTC One M8 set up. I didn't have a full numpad setup or anything; just power, volume, and channel. I had a separate widget for my ceiling fan, too.
Fair enough! That does actually sound perfectly serviceable.
HEADPHONE JACK - I scream into the void
I need my expandable 1TB SD Card storage. 128 default is lame
I want to have 10 TV shows, 50 movies, a offline wikipedia .zim file, bunch of photos, etc...
I don't want my phone to just be a phone, I want it to be a Pocket PC.
GIMME THE FUCKING SD CARD SLOT 😭
https://www.gsmarena.com/fairphone_6-13955.php
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover7_pro-13780.php
Everybody misses their IR blaster it seems. And why not? randomly turning off the neighbors TV is good wholesome fun.
🤣...guilty! Gawd, I forgot about IR blasters. I loved that feature.
I remember saving the day while setting up an event we had the TVs on stands but lost the remotes luckily the phone I had at the time had the ir and I was able to turn the TVs on and play the DVDs
Newer TVs don't have IR on them
It is all Bluetooth for the most part
How do siblings argue over TV channels if you can't put your hand over the IR receiver to stop your sibling (who was quickest to get the remote) from changing the channel?
I guess they all have their own screens now.
I remember reading a while back that most gen Z primarily use a phone for everything.
I believe it
That's probably my top 4. Easily swappable battery I can do without, but able to replaced with basic tools would be nice (like a screwdriver, not a specialist kit that involves regluing the damn thing).
My first phone could play terrestrial radio. I miss that.
Came to this thread to upvote over the air radio and I had to scroll way too far!
There's an app iirc that lets you plug headphones in and it somehow uses them as an antenna..
Oh wait, no more headphone jack!
The phone has to have an ADC hardware to allow that.
So basically it just has to have a microphone? Essentially, it has to be TRRS?
Well no. I was being simple to get the point across. You'd need something like this to amplify and demodulate the radio siginal and then convert it to digital.
And phones don't have something like that?
If they don't, you'll have to use something like an external RTL-SDR dongle and a USB OTG adapter...
Not all do.
It depends if the hardware is locked down or not
IR Blaster, Headphone Jack, swappable battery.
Ultimately...
Less thin, I hate this constant race to be the thinnest phone - lighter I would maybe be for - but thinner, fuck off.
Why I didn't buy a Fold7 recently:
I've been impressed by my Ulefone 27T. It's an armoured brick with a 10,000mAh battery. Waterproof, with IR and headphone jack. It also has a thermal camera.
Holy crap.
Across the board, in product survey after product survey, consumers agree with you every time about thin phones. At best nobody cares beyond being briefly conceptually impressed (in a way that doesn't translate into sales), at worst people actively hate how fragile it looks (or actually is). They always would rather have more battery life than a thinner phone, and actually below a certain weight most consumers prefer a phone to be heavier.
So why do companies keep racing to make the thinnest phones?
I honestly have no idea. This isn't one of those things where I pose a rhetorical question and then answer it. The planned obsolescence of the battery seems plausible, but a thinner battery doesn't really correspond to a shorter lifespan, just a shorter duty cycle. Maybe it's just a vanity thing, like a competition between companies, but the bean-counters don't usually let that sort of thing keep going if it doesn't sell. Maybe it's marketing, but that never really succeeds either. I really don't know.
Because Steve Jobs' ghost still haunts and demands all designs to be as anti consumer as possible
Anti-consumer for the sake of the bottom line is to be expected, but they're burning millions of dollars on this.
Stereo front facing speakers.
I have no idea why these terrible downward facing speakers took off, HTC had it nailed in 2012. RIP, king of smartphones. I'm glad to at least have 2 proper speakers on my Fold6 and 7, rather than an amplified earpiece speaker... But this is just not how sound works. I shouldn't have to cup my hand around the side to point the sound in the proper direction.
The Nexus 6P's front-facing speakers were pretty sweet; that device was near-perfectly symmetrical when turned sideways for watching media/playing games, and your palm didn't cover the speakers.
My current Pixel 9 Pro XL has stereo speakers, but one of them is the downward-firing speaker on the bottom. Makes for an odd effect if it's covered.
I'm certain I had that same htc one. It was the best phone i ever had. I really wish someone would make something like that again.
I loved it too. The m7 was excellent, then the m8 managed to level up everything great about the m7. Amazing phone.
I used to care about front facing speakers but then I realized I hate the sound they make and if I am "listening" to something i will connect to Bluetooth
Probably because of edge-to-edge screens?
I had a Moto X Style and remember being quite fond of the speakers.
Yeah - for years it was a primary deciding factor for me when it was time for a new phone - HTC One m7, HTC One m8, Moto X Pure Edition all had front facing speakers. I think by the end there were simply no longer any options though... And now 10 years later, they're still pointing the speakers at the damned ground. 😿
Restriction of Network access per app
You can still do it with third party firewalls
Gimmick features in general. So many android phones are just designed to be android flavors of an iPhone, removing all the character that used to be one of the benefits of not going with Apple.
I had a phone that had a built in kickstand. It was both useful for propping the phone up and as a fidget toy. My last phone had a camera that would pop up out of the top of the phone so they could put a better camera for the selfie cam while also not having a hole in the screen.
Root. No root means its never gonna be my device. I want more buttons back as well.
The triangle / circle / square (or back / home / app tray) navigation system.
I've had to re-enable it on my last phones because they come with the much less usable new gesture navigation, and I dread the day it's not an option anymore.
The classic app drawer.
If I wanted an iPhone (with their cluttered, unusable, and extremely user hostile design) I'd get an iPhone.
I don't want my screen cluttered with random icons, I want multiple sliding screens with widgets for the apps I need to be able to check at a glance, with a row of quick access apps / app folders at the bottom (slidable and hidable if possible), with an icon to access the list of less used apps on the top right, where it used to be back when android was useable instead of a cheap iOS clone.
Luckily third party launchers are still a thing.
Non-pastel colors. My phone used to be fire orange on black and i loved it!
Really just personalization in general.
Open Bootloaders, 3.5mm jacks, SD Card readers.
radio
IR transmitters
Miracast (in base open source Android, especially access to the ability to receive)
Scrolling notification text in the notification bar (seriously, that was sooooo much better than the obnoxious new default pop-up notifications)
A bunch of permissions that's been too locked down (stuff used by Tasker, networking tools, etc)
Definitely the jack. I have special headphones for listening to white noise while sleeping. The Bluetooth version have a chunky panel, and don't last long before they get that Bluetooth whine. That whine is a deal-breaker is a sleep aid.
So I use the 3.5mm version.... if I use the charge port converted to a Jack, I can't charge my phone while I listen to white noise and I'll wake up to 6%. Rhe loss or the jack is why I haven't upgraded my phone in years.
I thought I'd be okay without a headphone jack but I'm now learning that USB-C to headphone adapters will enter a power save mode after a few seconds of silence, and quiet moments in shows or music can cause that, then it takes a split second to power back up, so the end result is choppy sound if it isn't constant. Maybe it's better with a better adapter, but also how the heck do you search for such things on Amazon and the like? It's not exactly a specification they list...
Aww geez man, that's even worse! I learned about adapters and figured I'd at least be able to tolerate (but resent) the switch. But that will prevent me using sleeping headphones at all... :/
Not a universal solution for Android, but maybe it could lead your thoughts toward something useful. I know that Kodi has a toggle in the settings to stop that from happening. It works by constantly playing an inaudible low-frequency noise. Kodi runs on pretty much any OS, including Android, but since it's HTPC software, the UX is not optimal on a small touchscreen in my experience, though there are some skins and/or skin settings to optimise the UI for touch-based navigation.
You can get split cables that have jack and a USB C. But yes it sucks.
Although.. One silver lining I've found from being forced to convert the USB to 3.5 is that I now get to pick and chose different dac cables, and there are some pretty big differences.
What headphones are you using? Are they comfortable when you sleep on your side?
They're called sleepphones and yes, they're designed for side sleeping. Basically a headband with speakers. Each speaker is like a C battery, stitched into layers of felt.
The Bluetooth version has a silicon casing with a folding crease in it, to keep it flexible, but it's several inches long and doesn't seem to last long before I get whining. Idk how much of that is Bluetooth degradation vs the receiver's wear and tear from folding or being lied on. It needs regular recharging (micro USB, or i think they have a cordless charge version).
The 3.5mm has a long braided cord, has never whined, and doesn't have the chunky Bluetooth receiver. It gets charge from the phone. I always know I can use it when I want to.
Sleepphones also sells replaceable parts piecemeal so you can get just a band, just speakers, just BT unit etc.
Thanks. They look very nice and from what I see the wired version is much cheaper too, hopefully the cable can be bought as well, I always kill earphones from getting shibaried by the cord.
Built in IR blaster
I've got a oneplus 12 which has it. Random thing for them to bring back but welcome
Openness
About a month ago I lost outlined text. Currently I can only do highlighted text, which looks awful everywhere. I can't believe I need to post this in 2025:
USB mass storage mode. Some Android phones can’t do it anymore. I always thought the ability to select a disk image your phone would offer up to a of to boot off of was the coolest feature one of the things that made this iPhone user envious but it’s becoming less common for such a feature to still work in Android.
Blackberry Priv form factor:
The keypad doubled kinda like a touch pad as well. I could use keyboard shortcuts, typed way faster tha touch. All that without compramising screen space.
A keyboard.
I would love a modern phone with a slide out keyboard like the old Droids. Never got used to typing on screen, no feel to it.
Omg yes, i miss Android phones with keyboards, i had an lg one and that keyboard got so much use that a few buttons died.
Right? I hate touch screens so much.
A physical, landscape mode, QWERTY keyboard. FAHAHAHAHUCK typing on a touch screen.
I really miss USB Mass Storage mode. Back then you could plug in your phone into your computer and it would just expose the internal storage and SD card as standard usb storage devices. Nowadays you have shitty MTP which works barely if ever, so you're forced to use either internet or ADB for syncing files. Old way was better.
IIRC you can still enable it if you compile your own kernel but I wish more ROMs shipped with this feature by default.
Physical keyboards, easily removable backs and batteries
Notification led that is separate from the display. Custom per-app colour and blink pattern.
Being smaller than a phablet in 2010s. Bring back 4 inch phones for fuck's sake. You can price them at the same level as your gigantic six-inchers, I'll happily pay for it as long as the insides of the phone are premium otherwise. I should know that my phone is in my pocket by putting my hands on it, not because it's sticking out or making it impossible to sit down.
A 4" Pixel 9 Micro running GrapheneOS. I'd pay a thousand euros right now if such a thing existed.
But of course they have fucked up the UX of the operating system in such a way that a regular-sized phone like that cannot be practically used anymore. Oh well.
Sub 5" screen, 3.5mm jack, removable battery, 2-stage camera shutter button.
My old Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact had all of those, except for the removable battery.
I miss the days when everything wasn't glued together. The biggest hurdle to battery replacement or screen replacement is all that damn glue.
mass storage mode
Software festure, but I miss being able to turn on and off wifi and Bluetooth in the drop-down menu with one click. Latest android replaced it with another sub menu to select network or device, requiring another action to enable/disable.
LineageOS, CalyxOS and some other custom ROMs still support the old quick tiles if theyre available for your device :)
you can supposedly change it back with systemUI tuner
I actually prefer this method. I can switch wifi and cellular off/on and even select wifi networks from the single window that pops up. It's really handy. Stock rooted Pixel 9 Pro XL.
Thankfully OEMs use smart defaults and its the current behaviour as before.
I had a Google pixel 3a which had squeeze sensors, with lineageOS I had it assigned to my flashlight which was super handy. Also I enjoyed the heart-rate sensor on my GS5. Also really liked the DAC in my LGV20.
Agreed, I opened this thread just to be sure the squeeze sensor was mentioned.
What is a squeeze sensor? Isn't that just a button?
Yes, but no. Squeezing the whole phone is recognized as a gesture.
Screens without holes in them.
I'm a Xperia weirdo because the one I have still rocks a 3.5mm jack, expandable storage and a camera outside the screen. Not only are some of those gone from this year's equivalent, but it is 1500 bucks now, which is absurd. I went to a phone search engine and looked up that exact feature set and it turns out there are exactly zero phones that include those now.
I genuinely don't understand why people think the way to compete with Samsung is doing a worse version of their exact product. It's so dumb. Or maybe it's true and it's the people who are dumb. Because everybody says these things, but people seem to buy candybars with puncholes and no physical headphne support or expandable storage or IR blasters.
(also Xperia weirdo, checking in)
This year's 1vii - which I did unfortunately pay said $1500 for - still has all of those. Hole-puch free display, SD card slot, headphone jack.
It's lost the dedicated notification LED, but - aside from the change from a 21:9 to 19:9 display which I don't love, but is far from a deal-breaker - that's the only other outward change from the 1ii I had before.
Still the best waterproofing in the industry too, absolutely can't fault Sony there.
Argh. Stop trying to upsell me on the stupid expensive phone. I'm tempted enough as it is, and I hate to reward Sony for stopping my software updates so soon by giving them so much more money.
I was looking into Redmagic/Nubia as an alternative, but those are chunky and refuse to add wireless charging for some reason. The cameras are also of debatable quality, particularly software-wise.
I hate how the camera on my phone blocks part of the screen. Can't they just have the lens a bit higher up
Because too many reviewers and buyers complained about "foreheads" and "chins". As soon as the big makers went edge-to-edge in all four directions with notches/holepunches for cameras everyone else hopped on the bandwagon.
I have never understood this argument. The camera never blocked the screen. The screen moved up and around the camera. It's either that, or you get a forehead/chin.
What do you people want? Pick one.
I don't want a camera in the first place. I haven't taken a selfie since 2014.
But if you're going to have one you don't need a forehead/chin. My Xperia can fit a camera in a "forehead" of under 2mm. Thinner than most punchholes and on par with the "forehead" of many mid-range phones WITH a hole. And it gets more room for a full second front firing speaker, to boot.
They could have spent all this time making the "forehead" thinner like that. Instead, they obsessed with fitting the body to the screen and added an annoying hole to it. Typically one that is deeper into the screen than a small camera space would otherwise, so if you want to give up the screen space to avoid the distraction you end up with a WAY bigger "forehead" than my Xperia has.
So no, punch holes and notches are dumb, they don't expand the screen meaningfully and they provide no functionality. They're a bug, not a feature. I'd take an under-screen selfie camera at most, and those are very rare these days, too.
And people wonder why the Xperia costs so much lol. That shit costs a lot of money to properly engineer, money most people don't want to pay.
It certainly doesn't cost more than an under-screen display where you need to both engineer a tiny screen of less dense see-through pixes AND the right setup to counter the blur you induce on the software side.
All the Xperia needs is a camera small enough that you can put it right against the top edge, so... I mean, it's not going to be a huge high resolution sensor, but it's good enough for what it needs to be. It's certainly not the major driver of cost for the device. The rear tele camera that has a movable optical zoom is probably a bigger issue (and not particularly good, they could have gone with something cheaper).
But that's my point. It's cheaper to just build the screen around the camera.
See what I did there? The camera never removed screen real estate. The screen never had that real estate to begin with, unless it was engineered in a way that allowed it, which is not common yet.
I used to hate the notch - until I bought a OnePlus 6. Only then did I understand that the camera didn't cut into the screen, rather the screen grew around the camera. The holepunch is an evolution of that. Apple made it work for them with the whole "dynamic island" thing, and at this point nobody really seems to care about the cutouts anymore anyway. Except for a few overly vocal morons online.
Don't get me wrong here - I'm not arguing for holepunches and notches to stay forever, and progress in that area should be appreciated and more widely adopted. That said, I'm getting really fucking tired of seeing the same "holepunch/notch bad because Xperia exists" argument hashed out over and over again. That Xperia is $1500, and the fact that it's not a Galaxy or iPhone puts it at a massive disadvantage already. The average person has never heard of Xperia devices, and refusing to consider that viewpoint puts your argument at an even further disadvantage.
I do not, in fact, see what you did there.
You need a small camera to put it on a small bezel. But also, you need a small camera for a small punch hole, which is something that all flagship devices actively try to follow.
It's clearly true that the camera removes screen real estate if the screen of the Xperia 1 and the screen of the other phones have the same aspect ratio and size (the Xperia 1 is on the small side of modern flagships, but... yeah, they do), so the difference is between having a screen with a 2/3 mm bezel above it or having the exact same size and resolution screen with a hole in it. The screen is the same, one of them has a hole in it... so the hole is taking screen away.
And even if that wasn't the case and the screen was getting smaller, the hole is in the middle of your image. A smaller uninterrupted screen is better than an image with a hole in the middle. I don't understand how that is debatable, unless one is, you know, a bit of a moron. Yet here we are.
Now, I will give the notches that at least they poke from the top of the screen, so one could make the argument that the image isn't supposed to go over the line of the notch, and instead that space is for notifications and images should be coded to stay below that line. But of course then you have a WAY bigger "forehead" than any notchless phone would, and that still doesn't hold with the fact that most modern notches and punch holes are very clearly designed for the image to wrap around them in normal media viewing.
I do concede that most morons do not seem to care about the selfie camera, but hey, most morons also do take selfies, which is something I can't really wrap my head around. Then again, if truly nobody cared, then the industry wouldn't have spent a ton of money engineering under-display cameras and all sorts of flip cameras before deciding the compromises weren't worth it.
It's just a thing people have learned to live with on their least important device, like non-replaceable batteries, fixed, overpriced storage and lack of connectivity. The industry decided that was the weirdly enshittified trendy thing and consolidated around it and a lot of people find it annoying, just... not annoying enough to do anything about it. Welcome to the 21st century, I suppose.
Weirdly, you may have sold me on the 1 VII better than the guy telling me it's good. I may need to anchor myself into the sensible choice even at a premium before the enshittification train leads to a single design (two, if you count foldables that turn into a shitty tablet in exchange for being exceedingly frail and expensive).
At this point I am team "use phones less, use Linux PCs more" unless I am away from home.
I'm just chilling on my couch with my family. Having a nice ergo trackball and a monitor on an arm that can swing out in front of me is a game changer.
I might be the only one, but KEYBOARDS!
I even designed my own keyboard attachment to get one back.
A lot of people miss physical keyboards actually F(x)Tec Pro^1^ X has a physical keyboard. There is a modern clone of Blackberry Passport. There is the Clicks keyboard case for iPhones.
I think I'm one of very few enthusiasts who likes software keyboards better at this point lol.
Super-weird formatting aside, that looks pretty interesting. Out of stock though.
I agree the name super sucks. Still really cool there was enough interest in this form factor to get a project like this going.
The formatting most likely didn't help with people being able to google it, or to remember the name even.
It's quite old now and has been out of stock for a long time.
Yeah, I just noticed that it was released in 2023. Not necessarily a bad thing, really, but damn I'd like one of these devices if not for that form factor on its own. Still has official LOS support, too.
It originally was released in 2019 as the Pro^1 with the then 2yo Snapdragon 835.
The Pro^1 X was supposed to be released in 2019 too, and it would mainly differ in software, but it was delayed and delayed again until 2021. By then Qualcomm stopped manufacturing the now 4yo Snapdragon 835 and so they downgraded to the inferior Snapdragon 662. According to tests at that time, this was a major performance downgrade.
Actually getting them into the hands of buyers then still took ~1.5 years after that, so it really was released in 2023.
All in all, pretty much all reviewers agreed that it was a terrible phone with an ok-but-not-great keyboard bolted on for a very steep price. Can't find a price right now, but IIRC they sold for ~€800.
Current prices on ebay are totally crazy. North of €1600.
It's a bit of a dry spell for us keyboard fans.
I miss them dearly. Luckily there is some options, I currently using clicks but it is not without its flaws mainly that my phone feels like a tv remote.
I was watching this Janus Cycle video at the weekend, and god it made me wish I could buy a folding keyboard case for my Pixel 9.
Wish it was ranked choice voting. For me the list is: removable battery, expandable storage, ir blaster, headphone jack. I think repairablity is the most important and i never use the headphone jack but do use ir sometimes so thats the only reason its last. On phones with oled screens notification light is a software feature and fm requires the headphone jack.
My Motorola Moto Z had a shake shake flashlight feature. Not sure if this was Android or Motorola but it was very useful.
It’s a Motorola gesture. I don’t have a Motorola anymore, but I think shaking is the best gesture for turning on the flashlight.
Doesn't it activate when it's in your pants and you are moving about in a rough manner?
Holding the power button when the screen is off works pretty great and won't ever activate on accident. It is also a default Android feature I believe.
No, it has never happened to me. I think the software somehow detected when the phone was in a hand. But when I ran while holding the phone, it sometimes turned on.
It seems okay.
I loved that feature. Karate chop for torch, twist for camera, twist again to swap camera to selfie, flip face down for silent...
One of those things that should be introduced in to mainline Android, but no doubt patents are probably an issue.
My Moto G Power has it, super useful feature.
They still have it as a built-in feature. Had Moto Z, g 5g plus and now rocking g85. All of them have it. Too useful.
physical home button row.
give me those clickety clicks, i hate accidentally hitting back/home/whatever, whenever I'm typing or scrolling
I bought a modern off brand with an audio jack and micro SD, because why would I spend 3 times more for less features?
3 way tie between 3.5mm jack, easily removable, and now that microSD Express is finally becoming mainstream, a microSD Express card slot. It'd be nice to see in a flagship or at least a Mediatek mid range chip like the dimensity 8400
Human coded Smart Keyboard. Ever since they changed to learning algorithms the spelling and grammar corrections have gotten much worse.
I know they dont all remove it, but man audio jack phones were awesome. My usbc adapter sucks and bluetooth is spotty and low res.
Physical keyboard
I miss them nostalgically I think. I have four different styles of small wireless keyboards and other than responding to a quick text they are mostly infuriating.
Everything is swipe or speech now for me.
I miss controlling the volume on a per app basis. It gets unwieldy, but it was nice sometimes.
Ability to automatically turn wifi on and off with screen.
Samsung had a little pressure sensitive area at the bottom of phone screens in the S9 era. It was handy and I had it set up like a hidden home button.
The S9 also had a variable aperture camera, which I feel like could have been developed a lot more.
I also miss notification LEDs. Sure, AOD mostly replaces it, but it was fun setting different colors for people, situations, etc
The Essential phone had a ceramic back that was very comfortable and cool in the hand. Though it was slippery. Another idea that could have been developed further.
The different back materials on the Moto X were very satisfying. The customization of that phone was unmatched!
The 3.5mm AUX jack.
Yes, that one right there in the picture.
I got Motorola with a headphone jack, and I use it surprisingly often. All my Bluetooth stuff has fallen apart faster than my wired stuff.
They are one of the few OEMs that still offers headphone jacks and they are overall decent midrange phones. If they weren't so damned big and had an unlocked bootloader for ROM support I'd be on one right now.
Yeah, I've given up on bootloaders long ago. After I broke my last phone, finding a decent mid range phone with expandable storage, a headphone jack, stylus and nice colors was pretty nice. The cameras are decent, and the processing power is fine for most stuff. The only time it slows down is if I'm cropping and editing a video or screen recording, which is a pretty seldom thing.
My Pixel 4a was perfect, but it is sadly gone now. I ended up with an 8a to I could keep using grapheneOS, but without a headphone jack I just started using a standalone portable music player. It seems ridiculous because it is, but that is what they forced on me and I will never forgive any of these companies for it.
I think this is a One UI 7 thing, but the battery indicator for connected Bluetooth devices has completely disappeared. The only way to check the remaining battery life of my connected headphones or speakers is through a third party application, I can no longer find a way to do it in the OS itself.
I can see it on my pixel, but it might be because I have the app for my earbuds. I'll test.
I have a pair of Galaxy Buds (1st Gen) and they are the only headphones that still display a battery icon. Not sure if I'm missing something obvious but it feels very much like the type of anti-consumer walled garden change Samsung would make these days in its "copy Apple" era.
Reading through this thread gives me serious nostalgia. My first smartphone was a Motorola Droid, which really had it all: physical slide-open keyboard, headphone jack, removable battery, configurable notification LEDs, shake guesture for the flashlight. Good times. Kept on running with CyanogenMod well beyond the official support.
• pressure sensitive pens on non-flagship models
Rectangular screens without missing parts. I hate rounded corners.
Wild cards for number blocking. You could block whole area codes. Goddamn worthless fucking Nazi bastards took it off.
Trackball
is there at least a 3rd party accessory?
I don't know, you could probably find something that plugs in, but the trackball on the Nexus One was right below the screen and it made text editing easy. You could also scroll through text, web pages, home screens, sections of apps, and you could tap it, double tap it and hold it down to do things. It was so useful.
Android 4.4 lockscreen widgets
There used to be a one-click root option in older phones (I don't remember which one)
I used to be able to
unlockwake my phone and see what band was currently playing.OneUI fucked that up.
Edit: wake
Wait, can you not do that anymore?
Edit: I just checked. I'm on oneui 7.0 and it shows Spotify and the details of the song - even album art.
It only shows the song name and has miniscule controls which is awful when occupied (read: driving).
higher dpi/4k screens.
oled pixel layouts already have fewer subpixels than they should for say a claimed "1080p", leading to weird blur or aliasing in places.
My high dpi phone has made my eink reader redundant; the sharpness simply makes it way more comfortable to read, for me enough to be on par with print.
And now I can only await how long my phone will remain usable, knowing no new phones with higher dpi (600ppi+) are being made.
The ability to not have a lock screen.
Android Beam
Kind of a weird poll when I still have all those features, except maybe the IR blaster. Like, yeah, I would miss those, but I don't currently...
Let me guess a Sony smartphone?
Nope, it's a smaller manufacturer called "SHIFT". Kind of like a competitor to Fairphone, in terms of repairability, sustainability, Custom ROM support and being expensive AF. 🙃
I just looked at the site and it looks great, but parts of it didn't look available in English. Do you have any idea if it's fully compatible with US networks?
Hmm, I found this German forum thread from 2019, which says it doesn't support all frequencies used by US carriers.
Of course, this may very well be different with more modern models. You can try also asking on their forums, or maybe you're able to contact support directly. So far, I've always gotten a response fairly quickly.
Also just to note, I'm on the SHIFT6mq, which isn't being produced anymore.
I believe, they're currently in a bit of an awkward in-between phase, where you can only really get the SHIFT5me, which is an even older model, while they're planning out the SHIFTphone 8. That might still take some months, and quite possibly more than a year.
I don't think they have the capacity for two flagship models at the same time, so you just get these fairly long pauses in availability, which I just can't sugarcoat...
Thanks for looking. I'll see if I can poke around in their forums.
Animated and spanning backgrounds.
project soli was so cool. I loved having mmwave radar in my phone
None, I buy Motorola. Still have all the features.
Native SIP phone capability
Native (via adb) Immersive Mode. Still use it, but afaik support was dropped after Android 10.