Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most?
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Remember folks, What you know is protected. What you are is not.
Cops can force you to use the fingerprint scanner.
Luckily you dont have to give up using the fingerprint scanner if you believe in your ability to shutdown/restart your phone before you are taken into custody (it should require the passcode again in this case).
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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...
Bluetooth headphones do this, too. It's infuriating. Let me turn off battery saver mode, god damn it! (I assume this is on the headphones, not on Android, though?)
For some reason, TalkBack triggers this, too, so most Bluetooth headphones are useless for that purpose. Something in a recent update broke TalkBack in the Kindle app so it won't read continuously the "old way" (that worked) and instead uses "continuous reading mode" that pauses just long enough to put Bluetooth headphones to sleep every sentence. And I don't think Google cares because Amazon has implemented their own TTS system in the Kindle app that's slow as fuck for anyone used to speed reading with TTS, but it's the way everyone is recommending now for Kindle. I've switched to pirating books so I can read them in Moon+ Reader instead, since it works.
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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.
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Luckily you dont have to give up using the fingerprint scanner if you believe in your ability to shutdown/restart your phone before you are taken into custody (it should require the passcode again in this case).
Modern android OS has an optional lockdown mode that you can enable access to alongside restart/shutdown. And it disables all biometric access until your pin is entered again.
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I straight up turn the autocorrect off wntirely these days. Natural rypos are so much easier to read than autocorrect switching out entire damn wprds...
(leaving in typos for example)
Thats a good idea, i'll give that a shot.
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Open bootloaders, ir blaster, 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, replaceable batteries. The list goes on.
Some chinese phones still have ir blasters
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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.
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Physical keyboards, easily removable backs and batteries
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physical home button row.
give me those clickety clicks, i hate accidentally hitting back/home/whatever, whenever I'm typing or scrolling
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What do you need root for these days??
Removing unwanted system apps
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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.
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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
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Animated and spanning backgrounds.
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What do you need root for these days??
Whatever reason is fine.
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What do you need root for these days??
For anything related to cleaning up the device. Who needs samsung internet? Who needs uninstallable garbage you never use. Perhaps I want to back up my wifi config so when I transfer to a new device I can do so in a manner that doesn't bring old problems with me. What do I need root for? Because I know how to do things that secure my device against the manufacturer.
I have to settle for package disabler pro. At least I can lock off that stupid intrusive AI shit.
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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.
So why do companies keep racing to make the thinnest phones?
Because Steve Jobs' ghost still haunts and demands all designs to be as anti consumer as possible
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There used to be a one-click root option in older phones (I don't remember which one)
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Nexus 5 had the best finger print reader i've ever used. I still miss it to this day.
Do you mean Pixel 5? The Nexus 5 didn't have a fingerprint scanner.
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Ability to automatically turn wifi on and off with screen.
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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.
