Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most?
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no headphone jack is shitty but god i fucking loathe typing on a touchscreen keyboard
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.
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The core apps (like messaging, and calendar) being free software and open source.
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The triangle / circle / square (or back / home / app tray) navigation system.
I've had to re-enable it on my last phones because they come with the much less usable new gesture navigation, and I dread the day it's not an option anymore.
The classic app drawer.
If I wanted an iPhone (with their cluttered, unusable, and extremely user hostile design) I'd get an iPhone.
I don't want my screen cluttered with random icons, I want multiple sliding screens with widgets for the apps I need to be able to check at a glance, with a row of quick access apps / app folders at the bottom (slidable and hidable if possible), with an icon to access the list of less used apps on the top right, where it used to be back when android was useable instead of a cheap iOS clone.
Luckily third party launchers are still a thing.
Neither of these were abandoned
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Root. No root means its never gonna be my device. I want more buttons back as well.
What do you need root for these days??
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Non-pastel colors. My phone used to be fire orange on black and i loved it!
Really just personalization in general.
I'm still so salty about this. Making pastels the default pallete is fine I guess, making pastels the only pallete is infuriating.
Why did they lock it down so hard that nothing short of rooting my phone is enough to pick the colors I want?
Oh the horror, I might choose a vibrant shade I can see instead of a dull boring one that looks nearly identical to the 20 other choices I'm limited to.
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I'm still so salty about this. Making pastels the default pallete is fine I guess, making pastels the only pallete is infuriating.
Why did they lock it down so hard that nothing short of rooting my phone is enough to pick the colors I want?
Oh the horror, I might choose a vibrant shade I can see instead of a dull boring one that looks nearly identical to the 20 other choices I'm limited to.
It's like picking between beige and off-white to give the living room a little 'character'. I was thinking of maybe going with a taupe accent but it was overwhelming. Don't want to offend anyone!
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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
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OnePlus still offers this one on some of their phones.
Not my oneplus 9pro sadly
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At this point I am team "use phones less, use Linux PCs more" unless I am away from home.
I'm just chilling on my couch with my family. Having a nice ergo trackball and a monitor on an arm that can swing out in front of me is a game changer.
You know you can plug your PC into the TV right?
You ain't need swing out monitor
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finger print scanner being on the back of the phone not under the screen. and headphone jack
Remember folks, What you know is protected. What you are is not.
Cops can force you to use the fingerprint scanner.
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They're only nice if you can afford to run without a case. All curved screen cases suck and add unnecessary bulk for questionable protection.
wrote last edited by [email protected]They're only nice if you can afford to run without a case.
In this economy???
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- 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.
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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
