- IR blaster
- Headphone jack
- Expandable storage
- Physical keys, especially a D pad (I loved my Samsung i7500 for this)
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).
I miss the days when everything wasn’t glued together. The biggest hurdle to battery replacement or screen replacement is all that damn glue.
don’t be evil.
I might be the only one, but KEYBOARDS!
I even designed my own keyboard attachment to get one back.
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:
- Too thin
- Cameras slightly below other flagships
- No S Pen support, because they wanted to make it thinner
- Bad water resistance
- Awful battery size and life
- Overall, one of the more underpowered and under spec’d foldable on the global market - all because they wanted to be thin
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.
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.
Rectangular screens without missing parts. I hate rounded corners.
My HTC ChaCha had a full qwerty keyboard. Now I’m lucky if the on-screen one bothers to show up in some apps.
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
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
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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.
I bought a modern off brand with an audio jack and micro SD, because why would I spend 3 times more for less features?
My Motorola Moto Z had a shake shake flashlight feature. Not sure if this was Android or Motorola but it was very useful.
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.
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.
My Moto G Power has it, super useful feature.
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.
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. 🙃
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.
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.
