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
Isn’t having an OLED display and using it as an “always on display” the replacement for this?
Yeah, and unless it’s only activating a few pixels at a time it’s not the same.
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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
Some chinese phones still have ir blasters
I was pleasantly surprised when my OnePlus 13 had an IR blaster.
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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.
- Cases need a notch to expose the power button.
- Can’t use the power button to lock the screen while fingerprint unlock is enabled, because it immediately unlocks itself with the fingerprint.
- Accidentally unlocks itself way often when putting it in my pocket than with the back 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.
Cases need a notch to expose the power button
I don’t see why that’s a problem.
Can’t use the power button to lock the screen while fingerprint unlock is enabled, because it immediately unlocks itself with the fingerprint.
Sounds like you just had a shitty phone, that shouldn’t happen.
Accidentally unlocks itself way often when putting it in my pocket than with the back reader.
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.
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.
Yes it is. Once again, we were talking about on the back.
Again, we were talking about the back.
I hold my screen facing me so my hands are already resting 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 back of the phone.
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
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.
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.
Of how spoiled capitalism has become.
I liked the little led light at the top that would blink for notification
I don’t remember which phone, but one of mine had an rgb led that could be set to blink different colors for different apps. I really miss that!
I remember my OnePlus One had that
And you could customize the color depending on the message/notification!
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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
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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.
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.
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.
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You know its a really easy to prove against, right?
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.
Just have some basic radio spectrograph to detect any signals coming from a turned off phone.
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.
In reality, the correlation is phones continue to get thinner
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.
- Headphone jack.
- Removable batteries.
- Sidekick/Palmtop form factor with the full width keyboard.
- MicroSD Card slot, and OS support for executing software and accessing data on the card.
I’ve been holding onto my Galaxy S20 because of the SD slot.
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.
It’s sad how root is still required on many phones to reach full functionality, yet they makes you jump through hoops to get it.
On my phone I needed root to set a battery charge limit. The rom I’m using only added that functionality natively a few years ago. I still need root to make backups ever since google kneecapped ADB backup. Seriously, do they just expect people to not make backups of the device they use every day!?
no headphone jack is shitty but god i fucking loathe typing on a touchscreen keyboard
They keep getting worse, too. I loved my Galaxy Relay. I bought a Moto Z because someone was making a keyboard backplate for it… And they killed off the project a few months later.
The only thing worse than the on screen keyboard is Blackberry’s physical keyboard. Give me some kind of slider.
T9 (the old number keyboard) was the best layout: compact yet VERY usable. And with physical keyboards you could text someone blindly.
I just installed Traditional T9 to replace whatever that MS keyboard was (the swipe feature was nice, but I’m not sure it can beat T9).
Not sure how you can want a layout that takes 3-4 button presses to type some characters but sure I guess.
My first Android phone was Motorola Dext, second one was HTC Desire Z, which I held on to for a long time. By the time I had to replace it, there were no slide-out keyboard phones any more.
Then some time later F(x)tek X1 Pro was released. Looked like a perfect phone for me, but was too expensive, so I did not get it. But now that it’s time is over as well, I look at the reviews and see that I did not miss much.
So now I am sadly on a glassy rectangle like everyone else, but I do carry a collapsable bluetooth keyboard around with me sometimes, so that I can still type some longer text in a proper way.Also, I solved my no-headphone-jack issue by getting USB-C headphones. And there are USB-C to 3.5 jack adapters if you need to connect existing headphones or other equipment. So I don’t really get how this “I miss a hole” is everywhere and lasts for so long.
Having multiple Bluetooth devices is a pain. The adapters are easy to lose. Needing to charge yet another device sucks, especially because the battery will wear out eventually. The adapters I’ve purchased leak audio causing fucking Gemini to interrupt whatever I’m listening to.
It’s a dozen different points of friction that could be avoided by a simple feature.
Fuck, the freedom. Root & custom ROM, running your damn device that you paid money for the way you want to. Imagine that. I stopped after rooting your phone killed Snapchat (because 3 idiots use Snap Pay or whatever), killed your tap pay wallet, killed Pokémon Go, etc etc etc. Then they tried telling people oh bro, just hide your root bro Majisk hide root. Like I need one more thing to do. 🙄 If I need to hide it, and most of the benefits of rooting have gone away/are incorporated into smartphones & no longer needed…I’m just going to stop rooting.
Then the microSD card expansion slot. Some try to say it’s for waterproofing purposes, but they can use the same pop-out slot as the SIM card & it’s nbd. Others say it’s because the storage can sometimes be “unstable” & glitch, but over the years I’ve only had problems twice: just once with a Samsung, and then constantly with a shitty Motorola smartphone but that’s on me because I bought a shitty Motorola smartphone. I think they killed it just because they could, because everybody else was killing it off & they knew they were going to get your money regardless. And then either pay a premium for extra on-board storage, or pay $10/mo for the rest of your life for “cloud” storage. Or both! Money, money, money, it’s all about the money.
These guys got rid of everything that made an Android an Android, and if I’ve got problems with mid-tier phones, to spend $1K+ on a flagship Android. For crying out loud, I’m not spending $1K on an Android that doesn’t even have microSD expansion, at that point you might as well buy an iPhone.
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
killed Pokémon Go
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
Replaceable battery. No contest.
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.
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.
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
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.
Audio jack 3.5mm!!! I’m sick of buying USBC to audio jack adaptors! Just add a damn audio jack! IR for remote control.
Why do you need to buy more than one?
Since they break
Seems like an issue with buying cheap adapters rather than with the concept of adapters, cheap headphones will presumably break just as easily
What adapter do you use? Seriously, I am open to paying more for an adapter once instead of buying cheap adapters over and over.
Amusingly the only adapter I had is one that came free with an old phone which has just broken! I use wireless headphones mainly, not a fan of all the noise that comes from a cable banging against me as I walk.
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.
headphone jack mostly because it was the most consumer unfriendly decision removed purely to make phone companies more money
Control over it.
it is mindboggling how having root access is treated like an illegal thing to do, rather than the default. the phone should have the root password in the documentation you get in the box.
does the average user needs root? probably not.
however, it’s a piece of hardware you legally own, you should have access to it.
it’s like buying a car and not being allowed to open the bonnet and checking the oil voids the warranty.
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)
Don’t forget about the IR blaster.
Most useful gimmick on a phone ever. I never had to deal with an annoying TV in public throughout most of the 2010s. It was nice; it was one of my most-used features and I miss it dearly.
OnePlus still offers this one on some of their phones.
Can confirm. Currently rocking a OnePlus 12 with an IR blaster. Only sucky part is the app doesn’t let you put in custom codes or tweak the layout, so one of the old TVs I have set up doesn’t have a freaking number pad. Suuuper annoying to not have a number pad with digital channels.
Not my oneplus 9pro sadly
Unfortunately I’m all-in on foldables so my options are even more limited. I don’t think the OnePlus Open has an IR blaster.
Plus I really, really like Good Lock, which means I’m even further limited in my choices because it’s a Samsung exclusive.
