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!
HEADPHONE JACK - I scream into the void
finger print scanner being on the back of the phone not under the screen. and headphone jack
Replaceable battery. No contest.
Built in IR blaster
I’ve got a oneplus 12 which has it. Random thing for them to bring back but welcome
physical home button row.
give me those clickety clicks, i hate accidentally hitting back/home/whatever, whenever I’m typing or scrolling
Non-pastel colors. My phone used to be fire orange on black and i loved it!
Really just personalization in general.
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.
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. 😍
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.
at what’s gotta be greater than normal max screen brightness.
I love misplacing my finger and getting flash-banged by my phone! 😮💨
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
At this time, the 3.5mm jack is top with 27%
It always surprises me that so many people still want this. I know it’s representative of the anti-choice homogenisation of phones in general, but something like removable batteries or expandable storage seems so much more important than a dedicated old headphone connector.
I personally hate how annoying headphone wires are, but even if you like them then is it so inconvenient to leave an adapter connected to your headphones? And a splitter as well if you’re desperate to charge simultaneously?
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.
More so than they would from charging?
I charge my phone once a day.
I use my jack 3-4 times a day on average.
Fair enough, though would you be happy if there were significant improvements made to usb-c port build quality?
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.
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.
Of how spoiled capitalism has 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.
Yeah like improved cpu, GPU, and screen is expected so not even noteworthy. But everything else has felt like a regression in features.
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!
It depends if the hardware is locked down or not
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.
A physical, landscape mode, QWERTY keyboard. FAHAHAHAHUCK typing on a touch screen.
Android Beam
The feature where you can hold the phone comfortably in one hand and without having to do any gymnastics to reach the top corner.
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
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.
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.
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 😅
