Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most?
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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.
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Why do you need to buy more than one?
Since they break
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I might be the only one, but KEYBOARDS!
I even designed my own keyboard attachment to get one back.
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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?
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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
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My Motorola Moto Z had a shake shake flashlight feature. Not sure if this was Android or Motorola but it was very useful.
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.
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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
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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I miss the days when everything wasn't glued together. The biggest hurdle to battery replacement or screen replacement is all that damn glue.
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- 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).
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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.
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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?
My problem with that is that I use a phone cover. Flashing a light on the side of the phone however could be great.
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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.
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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
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.
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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.
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- 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 have an IR blaster in mine (still using my PoCo F3 after 4 years, it is still pretty snappy and all) and used it from time to time but now it looks like my remote for my AV is bluetooth anyway
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In order, I'd say SDcard slot, notification light, 3.5mm jack
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
