Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most?
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A keyboard.
Omg yes, i miss Android phones with keyboards, i had an lg one and that keyboard got so much use that a few buttons died.
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The 2nd and even 3rd point is not automatically true for every phone and setting. I have a combined fingerprint reader and power button on my Fairphone 5, and the 2nd thing has always worked just fine.
It also has the option to only enable the fingerprint reader if the display is on, which addresses your 3rd point completely. It means you can pick the phone up, including having a finger in the reader, and it won't turn on or unlock. You need to press down in the button to trigger the screen, then it can be unlocked. That also means that when locking it and turning off the screen actively by pressing the power button with the phone on, it never re-unlocks. To be honest this part wasn't a problem before the setting became available, as the locking would disable the fingerprint reader anyway, but letting your grip go slightly could trigger re-unlock.
Only activating the fingerprint reader when the screen is on is a regression compared to the rear reader. It means I need to squeeze the phone to unlock it, vs just placing my finger in the right spot. It also negates the purported advantage from the comment above mine about being able to easily unlock the phone while lying on a table.
I'm not arguing that the power button reader doesn't work for anyone. I'm saying that it is qualitatively worse UX for me in particular.
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Open bootloaders, ir blaster, 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, replaceable batteries. The list goes on.
Don't forget the notification light.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
If I could get a Motorola Droid 4 with a modern processor that would be peak.
I miss smaller sizes. I'm currently on the cheapest phone my carrier offers after my last one broke, and it's still way bigger than it needs to be. Shit literally slowly pulls my pants down if I have it in my pocket.
I miss the fingerprint reader on the back. I don't know which brain genius moved that function to the front but it was so much more convenient on the back.
I miss wired headphones. Bluetooth can't go five minutes without cutting out for a couple of seconds, and while I've tried to use a usb-c to 3.5mm dongle that adds an extra failure point compared to just having the port. And if phones are going to be these giant bricks in your pocket anyway they might as well bring it back.
And last but certainly not least I miss a physical landscape keyboard. There are a few gimmicky ass-phones that offer this feature but they all suck for different reasons. Swype is fine but I spend as much time correcting typos and incorrectly predicted words as I do typing, plus the loss of screen real estate to the software keyboard can make some sites and apps totally unusable in landscape mode.
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Pixel 5 has a back fingerprint reader. Think it's the last Pixel with it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I miss that.
My 5 died randomly one day.
The 9 under screen sensor works nice, heard the 6-8? light sensors were bad. -
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The ability to not have a lock screen.
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Software festure, but I miss being able to turn on and off wifi and Bluetooth in the drop-down menu with one click. Latest android replaced it with another sub menu to select network or device, requiring another action to enable/disable.
you can supposedly change it back with systemUI tuner
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Don't forget the notification light.
The notification light for me was never all that useful, i have unique ringtones for everything but i do agree they are an awesome feature for folks in spaces where their phones need to be quiet
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I miss that.
My 5 died randomly one day.
The 9 under screen sensor works nice, heard the 6-8? light sensors were bad.What's wrong with the light sensor?
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My first phone could play terrestrial radio. I miss that.
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Every damn feature.
But most? Removable flipping batteries. Having a bomb in your pocket computer that you can't remove, and shortens it's effective life without often complex surgery is absolutely criminal.
Removable D batteries have existed since 1898. It was a staples feature of machines. Nobody wanted, needed, or desired the tech brah "disruption" of gluing lithium bombs into phones.
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project soli was so cool. I loved having mmwave radar in my phone
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Android Beam
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Fuck, the freedom. Root & custom ROM, running your damn device that you paid money for the way you want to. Imagine that. I stopped after rooting your phone killed Snapchat (because 3 idiots use Snap Pay or whatever), killed your tap pay wallet, killed Pokémon Go, etc etc etc. Then they tried telling people oh bro, just hide your root bro Majisk hide root. Like I need one more thing to do.
If I need to hide it, and most of the benefits of rooting have gone away/are incorporated into smartphones & no longer needed...I'm just going to stop rooting.Then the microSD card expansion slot. Some try to say it's for waterproofing purposes, but they can use the same pop-out slot as the SIM card & it's nbd. Others say it's because the storage can sometimes be "unstable" & glitch, but over the years I've only had problems twice: just once with a Samsung, and then constantly with a shitty Motorola smartphone but that's on me because I bought a shitty Motorola smartphone. I think they killed it just because they could, because everybody else was killing it off & they knew they were going to get your money regardless. And then either pay a premium for extra on-board storage, or pay $10/mo for the rest of your life for "cloud" storage. Or both! Money, money, money, it's all about the money.
These guys got rid of everything that made an Android an Android, and if I've got problems with mid-tier phones, to spend $1K+ on a flagship Android. For crying out loud, I'm not spending $1K on an Android that doesn't even have microSD expansion, at that point you might as well buy an iPhone.
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I do not like the power button fingerprint reader.
- Cases need a notch to expose the power button.
- Can't use the power button to lock the screen while fingerprint unlock is enabled, because it immediately unlocks itself with the fingerprint.
- Accidentally unlocks itself way often when putting it in my pocket than with the back reader.
Cases need a notch to expose the power button
I don't see why that's a problem.
Can't use the power button to lock the screen while fingerprint unlock is enabled, because it immediately unlocks itself with the fingerprint.
Sounds like you just had a shitty phone, that shouldn't happen.
Accidentally unlocks itself way often when putting it in my pocket than with the back reader.
Again, shitty phone. You're supposed to actually push the button to unlock it. Don't understand why your finger would be on the back of the phone when putting it in your pocket anyway.
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The notification light for me was never all that useful, i have unique ringtones for everything but i do agree they are an awesome feature for folks in spaces where their phones need to be quiet
wrote last edited by [email protected]The flash pattern and frequency were set different for email, sms and other. On mine at least. It was really handy not needing to turn the screen on at all.
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mass storage mode
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Fuck, the freedom. Root & custom ROM, running your damn device that you paid money for the way you want to. Imagine that. I stopped after rooting your phone killed Snapchat (because 3 idiots use Snap Pay or whatever), killed your tap pay wallet, killed Pokémon Go, etc etc etc. Then they tried telling people oh bro, just hide your root bro Majisk hide root. Like I need one more thing to do.
If I need to hide it, and most of the benefits of rooting have gone away/are incorporated into smartphones & no longer needed...I'm just going to stop rooting.Then the microSD card expansion slot. Some try to say it's for waterproofing purposes, but they can use the same pop-out slot as the SIM card & it's nbd. Others say it's because the storage can sometimes be "unstable" & glitch, but over the years I've only had problems twice: just once with a Samsung, and then constantly with a shitty Motorola smartphone but that's on me because I bought a shitty Motorola smartphone. I think they killed it just because they could, because everybody else was killing it off & they knew they were going to get your money regardless. And then either pay a premium for extra on-board storage, or pay $10/mo for the rest of your life for "cloud" storage. Or both! Money, money, money, it's all about the money.
These guys got rid of everything that made an Android an Android, and if I've got problems with mid-tier phones, to spend $1K+ on a flagship Android. For crying out loud, I'm not spending $1K on an Android that doesn't even have microSD expansion, at that point you might as well buy an iPhone.
killed Pokémon Go
I run CalyxOS and I tried again recently and it DOES work
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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.
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Cases need a notch to expose the power button
I don't see why that's a problem.
Can't use the power button to lock the screen while fingerprint unlock is enabled, because it immediately unlocks itself with the fingerprint.
Sounds like you just had a shitty phone, that shouldn't happen.
Accidentally unlocks itself way often when putting it in my pocket than with the back reader.
Again, shitty phone. You're supposed to actually push the button to unlock it. Don't understand why your finger would be on the back of the phone when putting it in your pocket anyway.
Again, shitty phone. You’re supposed to actually push the button to unlock it. Don’t understand why your finger would be on the back of the phone when putting it in your pocket anyway.
This isn't a "shitty phone" thing. Every phone I've owned with a side-mounted fingerprint reader has unlocked via touch (not press). It's standard.
