Android

Open bootloaders, ir blaster, 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, replaceable batteries. The list goes on.

The physical fingerprint reader on the back of the phone.

I just want the LG G5 back. It had a(n):

• Removable battery
• SD card slot
• Infrared blaster
• FM Radio
• 3.5mm jack
• Compass
• Barometer
• Gyro
• NFC
• Fingerprint reader

And a ton of other stuff. Truly the best android phone ever made

Closest I can find now is the Ulefone line (no removable battery) but I have no idea if they're decent phones or not.

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.

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.

I liked the little led light at the top that would blink for notification

• 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 liked the notification LEDs that some of the nexus phones used to have, you could customize the color / flashing pattern per contact.

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.

Unimpeded root. You can still get it on maybe a handful of phones but apps are getting harder and harder to run with it enabled.

no headphone jack is shitty but god i fucking loathe typing on a touchscreen keyboard

Control over it.

The core apps (like messaging, and calendar) being free software and open source.

Audio jack 3.5mm!!! I'm sick of buying USBC to audio jack adaptors! Just add a damn audio jack! IR for remote control.

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?

Replaceable battery. No contest.

headphone jack mostly because it was the most consumer unfriendly decision removed purely to make phone companies more money

Blinking LED when I got a text

At this time, the 3.5mm jack is top with 27%

Replaceable battery

AUX plug

Expandable storage by SD card

Did I say replaceable battery already?

Edit: oh and non-edged screens (the roundings on the side, don't know the official name... But it sucks and almost all flagship phones have them, or at least when I bought mine 3 years ago, don't know about now tbh)

Rear fingerprint scanner PLEASE

The feature where you can hold the phone comfortably in one hand and without having to do any gymnastics to reach the top corner.

don't be evil.

Being able to take out the battery so that I can swap it with a pre-charged one. Those were great times. Then you can just throw the nearly-dead one on the charger.

This is identical to having the super power of being able to restart your phone to get a full battery charge.

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.

finger print scanner being on the back of the phone not under the screen. and headphone jack

HEADPHONE JACK - I scream into the void

Everybody misses their IR blaster it seems. And why not? randomly turning off the neighbors TV is good wholesome fun.

• 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 need my expandable 1TB SD Card storage. 128 default is lame

I want to have 10 TV shows, 50 movies, a offline wikipedia .zim file, bunch of photos, etc...

I don't want my phone to just be a phone, I want it to be a Pocket PC.

GIMME THE FUCKING SD CARD SLOT 😭

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.

My first phone could play terrestrial radio. I miss that.

Stereo front facing speakers.

I have no idea why these terrible downward facing speakers took off, HTC had it nailed in 2012. RIP, king of smartphones. I'm glad to at least have 2 proper speakers on my Fold6 and 7, rather than an amplified earpiece speaker... But this is just not how sound works. I shouldn't have to cup my hand around the side to point the sound in the proper direction.

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

Restriction of Network access per app

Definitely the jack. I have special headphones for listening to white noise while sleeping. The Bluetooth version have a chunky panel, and don't last long before they get that Bluetooth whine. That whine is a deal-breaker is a sleep aid.

So I use the 3.5mm version.... if I use the charge port converted to a Jack, I can't charge my phone while I listen to white noise and I'll wake up to 6%. Rhe loss or the jack is why I haven't upgraded my phone in years.

Open Bootloaders, 3.5mm jacks, SD Card readers.

radio

Root. No root means its never gonna be my device. I want more buttons back as well.

Non-pastel colors. My phone used to be fire orange on black and i loved it!

Really just personalization in general.

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.

Built in IR blaster

IR transmitters

Miracast (in base open source Android, especially access to the ability to receive)

Scrolling notification text in the notification bar (seriously, that was sooooo much better than the obnoxious new default pop-up notifications)

A bunch of permissions that's been too locked down (stuff used by Tasker, networking tools, etc)