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.
A physical, landscape mode, QWERTY keyboard. FAHAHAHAHUCK typing on a touch screen.
Dr Cox?
Barbie?
Sarah Chalke can be a lot, can’t she?
Root. No root means its never gonna be my device. I want more buttons back as well.
- 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.
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.
finger print scanner being on the back of the phone not under the screen. and headphone jack
Nexus 5 had the best finger print reader i’ve ever used. I still miss it to this day.
Going from my old pixel 5 rear-scanner to an in-screen scanner ahs been a nightmare. I have dry hands and i have gone from a <0.5s unlock to a 3-10s unlock depending how many times i need to scan or lick my finger, wipe it off then scan, or usually failing scans/giving up and typing in pincode.
“Oh my child is doing something funny or i quickly need to gake a photo of something…aaaaand its gone”. It is really fucking frustrating missing something, or even just trying to check a notification or timer quickly and having to stop and go through the whole dance of just unlocking the phone.
Seriously considering just going back to typing the fucking pincode 50 times a day.I liked it on the power button more. My Xiaomi had it there and it was incredibly fast.
Just worked. Pixel 7 is nightmarish, plus blasts white light into your eyes late at night
Yes, that one right there in the picture.
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)
Don’t forget about the IR blaster Most useful gimmick on a phone ever. I never had to deal with an annoying TV in public throughout most of the 2010s. It was nice; it was one of my most-used features I miss it dearly.
OnePlus still offers this one on some of their phones.
Rounded screens have mostly fallen out of style. I kinda like them tbh
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.
USB mass storage mode. Some Android phones can’t do it anymore. I always thought the ability to select a dock image your phone would offer up to a of to boot off of was the coolest feature one of the things that made this iPhone user envious but it’s becoming less common for such a feature to still work in Android.
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 😭
Native (via adb) Immersive Mode. Still use it, but afaik support was dropped after Android 10.
Samsung had a little pressure sensitive area at the bottom of phone screens in the S9 era. It was handy and I had it set up like a hidden home button.
The S9 also had a variable aperture camera, which I feel like could have been developed a lot more.
I also miss notification LEDs. Sure, AOD mostly replaces it, but it was fun setting different colors for people, situations, etc
The Essential phone had a ceramic back that was very comfortable and cool in the hand. Though it was slippery. Another idea that could have been developed further.
The different back materials on the Moto X were very satisfying. The customization of that phone was unmatched!
AOD causes burn in on every single device I’ve ever seen it used on. I want my notification LED back too. Hell, use the OLED display, just flash a colored dot every ten seconds at the top of the screen. Could even move around each flash to prevent burn in. I really miss that notification LED
Replaceable battery. No contest.
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.
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…
Aww geez man, that’s even worse! I learned about adapters and figured I’d at least be able to tolerate (but resent) the switch. But that will prevent me using sleeping headphones at all… :/
You can get split cables that have jack and a USB C. But yes it sucks.
Although… One silver lining I’ve found from being forced to convert the USB to 3.5 is that I now get to pick and chose different dac cables, and there are some pretty big differences.
Blinking LED when I got a text
