Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most?
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The physical fingerprint reader on the back of the phone.
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Built in IR blaster
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Restriction of Network access per app
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Built in IR blaster
I've got a oneplus 12 which has it. Random thing for them to bring back but welcome
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Removable battery is #1. My old Galaxy S3 (not even my first phone-yes I'm old) has absolutely godawful battery life but I had I think 4 total batteries around to make sure I could always have it even on a heavy use day. That sucked, but at least it was doable with a really easy process (peel off plastic back, pull out and swap battery, snap the backplate back on).
I keep an old phone around and sometimes use it to play like a video for my cats to watch if they're laying on my bed when I'm not in there. But it has to stay plugged in because it loses the first 20% in about 15 minutes.
And that phone in particular (a pixel 2) is particularly a pain to replace the battery in the first place.
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Open bootloaders, ir blaster, 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, replaceable batteries. The list goes on.
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).
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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.
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Everybody misses their IR blaster it seems. And why not? randomly turning off the neighbors TV is good wholesome fun.
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I miss controlling the volume on a per app basis. It gets unwieldy, but it was nice sometimes.
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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.
Pixel 5 has a back fingerprint reader. Think it's the last Pixel with it.
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The physical fingerprint reader on the back of the phone.
Lots of android phones have a physical fingerprint reader
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Notification led that is separate from the display. Custom per-app colour and blink pattern.
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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).
Most manufacturers dropped all or most of those features.
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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.
there's this awful venn diagram of circles with no overlap, where you cant get a smallish phone that gets updates. Even asking for it to be well made is a pipe dream.
Add onto the desire for an unlockable bootloader and your only options are the phones designed to be thrown into a river after the job is complete.
I wish those unihertz devices were serious whatsoever. They ship on old android versions and get maybe one update in their life cycle.
Android is such a clusterfuck of an OS too. kernel/driver space is an absolute mess so every OEM has to basically ship their own kernel. Qualcomm is the devil and hides everything behind NDA's so you can't really write an open OS from the ground up on any hardware that can do any real processing.
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Screens without holes in them.
I'm a Xperia weirdo because the one I have still rocks a 3.5mm jack, expandable storage and a camera outside the screen. Not only are some of those gone from this year's equivalent, but it is 1500 bucks now, which is absurd. I went to a phone search engine and looked up that exact feature set and it turns out there are exactly zero phones that include those now.
I genuinely don't understand why people think the way to compete with Samsung is doing a worse version of their exact product. It's so dumb. Or maybe it's true and it's the people who are dumb. Because everybody says these things, but people seem to buy candybars with puncholes and no physical headphne support or expandable storage or IR blasters.
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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.
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Open Bootloaders, 3.5mm jacks, SD Card readers.
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Everybody misses their IR blaster it seems. And why not? randomly turning off the neighbors TV is good wholesome fun.
...guilty! Gawd, I forgot about IR blasters. I loved that feature. -
Lots of android phones have a physical fingerprint reader
wrote last edited by [email protected]on the back of the phone.
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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.
