For me its the ‘Knock Code’ that LG had on their phones (I really wish LG still made at least the V series phones)
Basically there was a four-square area and you set up a sequence of where you would tap to unlock the phone. That set of squares was only shown when you set up the code
Then, to unlock your phone, you would tap those areas in the sequence you set up (even with the screen off).
Fingerprint readers are nice, but I really do miss the knock code
Edit: did find this article with a way to do the knock code, but if done wrong, could brick your phone I guess.
Plus, article is from 2014. When I looked at XDA’s info on it (they also being the developers) it looks like development on it is over, but individual modules may or may not still be supported by their devs
Unlockable bootloader, removable battery, headphone jack, being assembled with SCREWS rather than GLUE.
Love the first answer as, I have to get on my Linux soapbox here.
I remember first using Linux (Ubuntu 9.10 for those curious). One of the big ideas behind it was ‘its your computer, do what you want’. That’s why you can have access to Root or the Super User. Since its open source, root can do what it wants.
Android was initially built on Linux, but they have taken Root and turned it into a way to restrict users not just from sensitive things (like necessary system apps), but also from bloatware (looking at you Samsung). Years ago I had a phone that came with the NFL Network which I didn’t want. Could I remove it? Of course not, I would have to be Root to do that!.
Sorry for the rant, but really, I should have access to anything on my phone if I want it. Give me a warning, make it so people can’t get to it ‘accidentally’, but then let it be on me.
You can still buy Android phones that have manufacturer support for unlocking the bootloader. Once that’s done obtaining root is trivial. Pixel phones notably support this. Personally, I only buy phones I can unlock the bootloader on to show the demand for this feature. It doesn’t matter to me how great a phone is otherwise. Can’t unlock the bootloader? Not buying it.
That said, I completely agree with you. We all pay for and own the hardware, but let the manufacturer dictate what software it can run. That’s like buying a car and letting the car company tell you what roads you’re allowed to drive your car on. I don’t really blame the average use for not giving a crap because end users will never care about this stuff as long as their basic needs are met. It’s a failure of the people in the software industry to stand up for the open systems that built everything we have today. Without that constant fight for openness companies are going to be more than happy to take advantage of a locked down system to create a competitive advantage. Hell, look at what Google is currently doing with WEI in Chrome. If they have their way, the web will become just as locked down as smartphones are now.
Android was initially built on Linux
For the record, it still is.
You want to… own the phone you bought???
Spot on, my daily driver is a PinePhone Pro with keyboard case. It ticks all the boxes. It also covers the “physical keyboard” feature which is a few comments down.
It has its downsides, but it’s a full fledged Linux computer in my pocket. What’s not to love?
Shits me off that rooting the phone immediately blocks most banking apps.
After a few years of playing cat and mouse with the workarounds for safety net I finally said fuck it.
If they’re going to force me to live with an unrooted phone, I might as well have shit that works with the rest of my families eco-system and go iPhone.
To be fair, there still is quite a bit that can be done using ADB and no root, much more than you’ll ever get with iPhone.
But yeah, I agree my banking app is 100% of the reason I stopped rooting my phones.
Fair phone seems to be doing it… except their last phone removed headphone jacks and introduced “fair ear buds” or some such… even the open company wants to increase sales.
Yeah that’s why I have the fairphone 3, also the 4 is REALLY expensive. And fairphone isn’t really an open company but more open than others
Sony phones still do the bootloader and headphone jacks at least. I’m pretty happy with mine.
Problem is they’re kinda overpriced and not very good value. Also I hate the super tall aspect ratio that they’ve gone with.
Many midrange phones still have headphone jacks, and removable battery has to come back if they want to continue selling in the EU.
Slowly going away though. Samsung took them off in the A53, and Xiaomi did the same with the T series phones.
Screws. Hell ya.
wait phones have non-unlockable bootloaders? I’ve never seen that before although you do have to do some annoying stuff on some to unlock them which isn’t necessary
Plenty of phones have unlockable bootloaders and it used to be pretty much an expected thing on Android phones until manufacturers and carriers started locking it down and being more Apple-like. You can’t run most custom ROMs without an unlocked bootloader as being able to run a custom kernel requires an unlocked bootloader. Being able to use non-Android Linux operating systems like postmarketOS also depend on unlocked bootloaders.
On most it’s just a matter of toggling an option in developer settings and using fastboot to unlock. Some make it more difficult than that, others completely prevent unlocking (and thus become e-waste after the official software stops getting updated).
Removable battery is the big one. I had a phone where they only cost like $15, so I could take 2 of them on a trip and last a week w/o charging.
Removable batteries may come back since the European Union has mandated all smartphones have them by 2027
I did see that, of all phones and manufacturers, the Kyocera DuraForce Pro 3 on Verizon actually has removable batteries (and an sd card slot).
There’s definitely a business opportunity for hot swapable batteries. I really don’t understand why no one is exploiting this market. Construction, factory and all scale workers need phones and if they can hotswap battery they’ll gonna love that.
They make rugged phones and tablets for industrial setting with replaceable batteries. But they are way more expensive that consumer devices of the same spec.
Just curious, what situations do you find yourself in relatively frequently that a hot swappable batter would be more convenient?
Nowadays w/ 15 SOT I don’t think I’ve actually needed one minus camping where I don’t really use my phone much anyways.
Being able to rip the battery out when the phone locks up. Needing to make sure it’s actually off and can’t be remotely powered on. When it’s 3 years old and the hardware is still well up to the task but the battery lasts 4 hours.
Being able to rip the battery out when the phone locks up
How often does your phone lock up that that’s necessary? I used to have lockups a lot more but android is damn stable now, haven’t had one in years.
Needing to make sure it’s actually off and can’t be remotely powered on
Do you disconnect your PC’s PSU?
When it’s 3 years old and the hardware is still well up to the task but the battery lasts 4 hours.
Fair, but if you’re getting 4 hours SOT after 3 years, it’s just not a great phone. My current Note 10+ still pumping out 10 hours SOT and I’m a HEAVY user.
Honestly in 2015 I’m totally on your side for this, but in the last few years I’ve never felt the need to hotswap batteries, and only slightly felt the need to replace it in general.
Samsung does produce the xcover series for construction/industrial use. I seriously considered one, the issue was it would have been a downgrade for me in CPU, display and doesn’t have dex
I don’t understand that argument, power banks are widely accessible nowadays, you can charge your phone without downtime, also can’t imagine charging this additional battery, like shutting the phone down jest to charge the second one? I’m all for user replaceable batteries tho in case of battery degradation and prolonging device’s life
While true, my personal gripe is when the main battery goes to shit. It’s nice to be able to swap it out and get another 3-4 years out of it
At that point you are using outdated tech
I’d love to hear how having a few pieces of metal touching instead of being soldered is considered outdated tech
The only phone I had to even consider changing the battery was a Windows phone in 2015 and the replacement battery was the same age (and degraded state) as the old one. I don’t get the need for quickly swappable batteries.
I used to carry a backup battery so if I was away from a charger camping or so ething I could just pop a fresh battery in
IR Blasters!
I feel like I’m the only one who used them or cares that they were quietly phased out of phones.
You used to be able to use your phone as a universal remote. Being able to control my TV, sound system, ceiling fan, and lights all from my phone was so convenient! Plus if you were stuck in like a waiting room and they had ads or garbage like Fox News on, you could change the channel or turn it off completely. It was an incredibly useful feature to me, but I guess barely anyone else used since it was removed from phones without any complaints.
Except me. I’m complaining!
Back in the day, I discovered I could i) print over IR to our office’s HP laser printer from my Psion organiser, ii) print control codes from the built-in OPL language to change the display message on the printer. I would occassionaly send messages like “insert coin”, “too much paper”, “grammatical error”, etc. when colleagues were printing.
I love it! Those messages are hilarious!
Wing night at the pub took on a whole new danger. The IR blaster was a total selling point for me on a few devices.
Still had one on my previous phone - LG V20. Loved when people starter looking around confused when I started browsing the channels on the public TV on gas stations, waiting rooms, gym etc.
I really miss it too. My wife loses the remote every 5 minutes.
Redmi Note phones still have (or at least had) them.
I remember transferring files via IR. It was convenient.
I remember, pre-Wifi, setting up a network over IR between two laptops to play C&C Red Alert.
Infrared Alert
IR blaster. You could have a universal remote app and control any tv from my palm PDA
100% this. I used to be able to control my ceiling fan, my portable a/c, and my TV from my phone.
Now I have to use the fan remote, the a/c remote, and install and create an account with some stupid TV app.
…it was also fun for changing the channel of TVs at bars & restaurants.
You can still buy a universal IR hub and place it somewhere within line of sight of your appliances, then control it via an app, which often has Google Home / Apple Homekit integration.
This brings memories back for when IR data exchange was a thing and you had to carefully place two phones head-to-head and not move them for minutes just to transfer a song lol.
One of the reasons I had Xiaomy phones in the past 5 years. Many models still have IR blaster.
Funny thing is I work for a company who manufactures products with infrared sensors and we have an app specifically for IR capable snartphones to fine tune these products. In the past 5 years I did not see a single client who would have IR on their phones, so basically the app is not used by a single person anymore. Either this or they can buy our official remote… for 200 euros a piece.
Pubs were fun with these.
Same with screwing around at school
There is a USB-C IR blaster that exists, but the Tiqiaa/ZaZaRemote app is awful.
Do you know any app alternative?
I didn’t find an alternative, when I looked a few months ago.
Yep. My final phone to have one came with this app to control it that was straight malware. Force click a pop up every time you open the app type shit. I still miss it
Not everything uses IR blasters anymore.
User-replaceable batteries.
They’re coming back!
If you have a Fairphone that’s still the case
Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro gang!
Headphone jack, dedicated fingerprint reader, removable battery, physical sim card trays
Definitely miss the dedicated fingerprint reader. Had a metal case once that came with a fairly thick (tempered glass I think) screen protector. Everything worked great except the fingerprint reader.
Removable batteries may come back since the European Union has mandated all smartphones have them by 2027
Samsung xcover pro
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php
physical sim card trays
Seems like a backwards move IMO. honestly haven’t needed a tray in ~6 years
That tray is important to me at least since my last couple phones used that same tray to also hold the SD card. I can’t speak for anyone else, but a phone without an SD card for extra storage is a huge NO from me, so that tray is an absolute make or break for what my next upgrade is gonna be.
Honestly? For all the bitching when Apple first removed it, I hadent and haven’t used wired headphones for a long while. I had Bluetooth headphones long before then.
I still don’t like them, audio gear should last, and Bluetooth earphones are the ultimate in disposable tech. Costs more, shorter lifespan; only good thing is that it’s a revenue driver for those producing them.
I’ve owned three Bluetooth headsets in total. The first I lost, the second is now my wife’s, and the third I still use. I wouldn’t call them disposable, but I’ll agree they are easier to lose.
Something a wired set of anything can’t give me is absolute freedom to move my head and walk away from my phone. I will never willingly go back to wired for anything other than gaming.
The batteries in them aren’t going to go past 4-5 years; I have headphones and earphones over 10 years old, with one pair about to reach the two decade mark.
That is honestly impressive. I can confidently say I’ve only owned one wired headset for a decade, and it’s the one I use for gaming so it never leaves my office.
Everything else has either broken, or been lost. Though I fully admit, serviceable wireless buds would be a thing of beauty. IIRC there are people out there actively working on the problem (other than the companies explicitly aiming for them to be a consumable forever.)
In my experience wired gear doesn’t last as long as wireless. The cable is a major weakness and there’s no affordable way around it.
Couldn’t disagree more. Plenty of wired headphones and iems come with detachable/ replaceable cables. On the other hand wireless earbuds can be difficult to keep track of and easy to lose if one happens to fall out. If you lose one, congrats you have to buy a whole new set because they don’t generally sell replacements and usually come paired from the factory meaning getting a second replacement wouldn’t work.
I’ve got wired buds i bought ten years ago that are still kicking and wired headphones made in the late 80s that have only needed cup replacements. Wired headphones will cost half that of wireless for similar quality and if a cable is ever damaged and isn’t detachable it really isn’t difficult to solder in a new one.
God I wish I could get a pair of wired headphones with detachable/replacement wires.
Definitely something I really wanna invest in some day in the future since I have had pretty bad luck with the audio jacks breaking on me.
You should look into the world of IEMs and “chi-fi”. There are great sounding headphones with detachable cables that are still very affordable.
I definitely will look into this.
No affordable way around it? If you are approaching BT headphone cost, your headphones or buds will almost definitely come with a detacheable wire.
Personally my on the go is PortaPro, they dont have detacheable cable, the wire is flimsy but are only 30 bucks and the repair on them is actually super easy, the part where the wires solder on is actually easily accessible.
I don’t know why you are downvoted. Wires are major breakpoint in many earphones. When i used a cabled earphones daily for hours as a student, one wouldn’t last me 6 months. I could not solder freely since they always broke near jack entry for some reason and i didn’t have cables around me all the time since i wasn’t an electrician. Finally last headphone i used had detachable cables. After that i used bluetooth all the way.
It’s probably a rarer use case, but I use the headphone jack on my S10 all the time to connect it to my stereo and get good audio quality, most cheaper bluetooth receivers only use SBC so the difference is quite noticeable. (Also because the S10 has a pretty good DAC).
I dont care about the jack, the lightning-3.5 for 10bucks is more than a-ok, that said fuck bluetooth headphones, apart from the “smart” features, sub 50$ cans can and will blow the audio quality out of the water for many of the “entry level” (quotes cause entry is still approaching 100 bucks) BT ones and when you match price it is no-contest.
That said BT cans are still fine but after dabbling with hi-fi I can’t go back to BT.
I think it came a bit too soon. I had a mid-tier (couple hundred bucks) pair of headphones, so it was annoying to me until they broke and I moved to Bluetooth (Sony WH-1000 gang)
They did have a dongle for it. Annoying, but not insurmountable by any means.
I use them daily at work. Luckily I found a pair with a lightning connector. I also use cable in the car (it’s too old for Bluetooth) and it’s a pain not being able to charge and listen.
We have a Bluetooth adapter for our car audio and it’s great. Plugs into the aux jack and car power. Really handy not needing to plug in.
Same
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Yeah I’m glad that some series (Pixel AFAIK) are now releasing slightly smaller phones, because the growth was getting ridiculous and highly impractical.
I feel the same way, but with one little problem: small phone, small battery.
I basically flip back and forth between small phone and big phone because I can’t stand one aspect of each.
One of the features I miss dearly from when I used the iPhone, was the ability to double touch the home button, and it would bring the whole screen down by half so that you could reach stuff. There’s probably a way to do it on Android, but idk
Idk about stock android, but on One UI there’s one-handed mode: you swipe down on the navigation bar and the display becomes way smaller.
I switched to iPhone partly because the mini is that size where you can comfortably use it with one hand.
I hate how phones have slowly started to turn into tablets. No thank you.
On android I recently learned about quick cursor. Changed my life 😂
What is that? I have tiny hands, you may be about to change my life lol
It’s an app apparently
I miss the notification lights. One of my first true smart phones was the original oneplus. It was fun setting up custom colors for different types of notifications and came in handy every now and then
God yes. I had a phone with a bright LED right next to the front camera and it was so convenient to know exactly what app was notifying me at any time
We got my legally-blind grandma a flip-phone with a notification LED on the outside. That little light has been a huge pain, because anytime she misses a call from a telemarketer/scammer or gets a marketing text, it turns on and she just. can’t. ignore. it. If that light is on, I’ve gotta drive all the way over there and clear the notifications.
I would like to ask about if you can not teach the poor old people some button combos to “mark as seen” but i imagine some old people want to know everything on their phone even if those texts and calls are scams and even they knew they are scams. Nevermind.
If you have an OLED phone, this is still a thing you can do.
Galaxy XCover 6Pro still has one. Also headphone jack, SD slot and user removable battery
Physical keyboards.
Or even just the navigation buttons being separate from the screen.
I really miss how the blackberry volume rocker buttons would seek media on a long press
Preach it, brother!
What sucks is it would be easily doable.
Before smartphones were big I had a Samsung Messager (I think) with a slide out keyboard). Why not? A slide out keyboard would be sweet, and then you could choose to enable the digital keyboard if you wanted.
Wonder if they make a phone case with a keyboard (they certainly make the bluetooth keyboards for phones)
Edit: did some looking. It looks like they used to make these in a way I was thinking, such as this one
They don’t seem to make them that way now (at least not for phones). I did run into a phone that has a new-ish phone that has a physical keyboard
I’ve seen such keyboard, packaged neatly into a folding case. Problem is the keyboard doesn’t have enough weight to support the phone so it becomes awkward trying to hold the weight of the phone with your fingers while typing.
I still have my G1 and G2, both in their original boxes. I adored the G1 so much.
PinePhone with keyboard case!
Brave.
Wrong but brave
I could type almost three times as fast on a t9 as I can on a touch screen, and I’ve written an entire novel on a touch screen.
The old ways are forgotten. They were not wrong.
Fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. So you’d pick it up and your finger would naturally fall on the sensor, so that by the time you look at the screen, it’s unlocked.
I also found these to work way more consistently than on screen fingerprint scanners.
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On my Samsung fold 3, fingerprint sensor on power button is awesome.
Works really fast and it’s very reliable. Much better than fingerprint sensor under screen in my old oneplus 7 pro.
I’m still on the original google pixel, and I am dreading the day I’m forced to upgrade. It has the backside fingerprint sensor, and is in general pretty much the platonic ideal of a smartphone.
Except at current screen sizes, holding your phone such that the index finger is firmly in the middle of the back of the phone means you have barely any screen reach with the thumb.
Headphone jack
And its buddy SD card slot.
Why phone manufacturers? Why?
You condemn us to dongle life.
It’s all about selling the solution to a problem they created.
No SD card slot? You are forced to upgrade since you cannot store anything more than what they allow.
No headphone jack? Hope you like buying our inferior first party wireless earbuds or the shitty dongle thing.
Next up on the chopping block will be the charging port in favor of wireless charging, I swear.
By that point, I think I would rather just buy a phone that has all of those features and replace the components as needed instead of upgrading while also having a burner phone I can transfer whatever “e-sim card” they force upon me.
Hope you like buying our inferior first party wireless earbuds
You don’t have to buy phone brand headphones. There are other wireless ones.
Wireless ones suck. And the dongle is a shitty DAC that determines what your wired headphones’ tone is like. I’ve got a couple dongles that really only work well in my car’s tape adapter, and others that only sound okay on certain headphones. It’s a crapshoot.
You can get good dongles, but you will pay for it.
I have a Bluetooth receiver that I plug my wired headphones into now.
Yeah, I’ve got an old APEKX “brand” receiver. It sounds great with Koss headphones. Misplaced it, and got a new one and it turns out the innards were replaced with shitty chinese dollar store parts. Luckily I found the original.
When did you last buy them? They improved a lot
lol no they haven’t. I bought some this year and they are beyond frustrating to connect to, just like they’ve always been.
Been buying them off and on every few months. Don’t.give a damn about wireless headphones though. They’ll never sound as good as wired, and fuck needing to charge yet another peripheral.
If its wired then its always connected
If not then only sometimes
Dumb point
Look, we have made a 1TB SD card!
Too bad you can’t use it.
My first smart pocket device had two SD slots, a full-sized one and a mini- one, accessible at all time with no bullshit attached. I remember using it to share photos between people’s cards right at the end of parties. I thought it can only get better from there.
Now I’m typing it from the phone that’s twice the size and if I were to attempt ejecting my microSD card / SIM tray, it’ll shutdown.
I wont buy a phone without one out of principle
I’m still mad they removed cassette decks from cars, myself.
I miss my smart watch waking me up outside of detected REM sleep.
On the Microsoft Band you could set a time window where the alarm would go off - say between 0700-0800. If you’re in REM sleep at 0700, the alarm stays off until you naturally rouse, or 0800.
I’ve worked as a sleep scientist for 7 years, and the idea of not being woken out of REM is such a neat idea, and yet no other watch seems to do it.
Probably because that detection isn’t done on the watch. It’s a machine learning model running on the phone (if not worse) I guess.
Sleep as Android seems to offer such alarm.
+1 for sleep as android. Been using it for years by now.
The Huawei Talkband series does it. It’s a smartwatch which turns into a bluetooth headset. For some reason, most reviewers struggle to see why anyone would want that but I struggle to see why anyone wouldn’t…
I really miss the Band 2. It was so far ahead in terms of features, sensors, and the display was gorgeous.
- iris scanner
- Dedicated MicroSD card slot
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- Removable/user replacable battery
- Metal backs
- Front firing speakers
I’m loving my Xperia, has 3,5mm jack, SD card slot (which I don’t use atm, 256GB internal is plenty), stereo speakers in the front.
Don’t forget the slot is tool less!
Ah, yes. I don’t know what to think of that one, there is a microphone hole right next to the slot, and ofc I poked it trying to get the slot open. Luckily I didn’t use that much force and didn’t break anything… 😅
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You can say the same with everything I mentioned
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You misunderstood, you missed the point entirely (I didn’t mean he was right)
what new phones have a headphone jack? I’m hanging onto my Pixel 4a for as long as possible so I can keep using my wired headphones
Why do you liked wired headphones? Once i got a good set of Bluetooth eaebuds I never looked back. I use mine all day every day at work. They’ve increased my quality of life dramatically. Wired headphones made it so inconvenient.
a few reasons: Mostly I switch between devices a lot (phone, personal computer, work computer, steam deck), and when I’m using Bluetooth headphones it’s always a pain to switch, and I get connection issues when I’m connected to more than one device at a time. I also have high-quality wired headphones already that would cost hundreds of dollars to replace with a Bluetooth version of similar quality.
159 android phones so far in 2023 according to GSMArena but here is the problem not every phone has a headphone jack it is no longer a given to have a headphone jack
I bellive Pixels and some Sonys.
A battery which lasts up to a week.
This sounds like such an impossibility nowadays, but a whole week would be amazing!
Physical buttons. Sometimes an app or the OS itself will fuck up and not show you the home or back button for example.
I would miss headphone jacks but any phone worth buying still comes with those… for now
I know people hate on the iPhone, but even it can accept wired headphones with a simple adaptor. The fever over losing wired headphones is strange because if certain people want them so badly, they can easily have them.
I have a wired earbud set as a backup, and the few times I have had to use it at the gym, it’s always felt like more of a hassle than Bluetooth earbuds.
It’s nice to be able to set the phone anywhere while doing things and not have to worry about the cord tangling up.
Similarly doing various chores around the house, with wireless I can set the phone anywhere and not worry about cords tangling up, or my phone coming out of the pocket of my shorts.
I’ve got some cheap 3rd party wireless earbuds with silicon earpieces, nothing fancy and they stay charged for ages. I know people complain about battery life, but it’s very rare for me to run out of charge with them.
