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Bring back the IR blaster. No one apparently misses it but me.
I’d rather have an IR blaster than a headphone jack
You can have an IR blaster as an accessory for the headphone jack.
Do you remember the moment in time people were making accessories which took up the headphone jack? Pepperidge farm remembers.
I have a windmeter using the jack, and it still works
why not both
I have a Poco X3 Pro and I have both + an sd slot
And a notification LED too.
Some Xiaomi phones still have them
Yeah. I have one, I don’t really use it ever.
Forgot that. Actually, the Redmi Note 12 that I’m typing this on actually has one! But in the US, yeah.
I was not missing it for about a couple years but now I’m missing it again, it was just so damn good and like why can’t our monitors and PCs get IR receiver then we would be about to use a remote to play/pause, control volume, and forward and rewind things on it (yes you can also use wifi based apps, but I don’t want to set up an ad hoc network every time I need it or connect to an open WiFi)
P.S. I’m aware my idea isn’t the best, but it’s just the perfect mix of convenience and usability for me
I was annoyed when they removed it but a lot of electronics did add apps for the electronics so it wasn’t a huge deal then. But between the poor performance and privacy issues of the apps, I really miss the IR blaster.
Shouldn’t it be possible to just use one of the cameras or even the light sensor as receiver and the screen as sender? At that point, you only need software support.
well, maybe. Neither cameras nor screens are optimized for the infrared spectrum (in fact, cameras in particular filter it). So that might be possible but I wouldn’t bet on it
Might not be as reliable and will be less efficient in just trying to encode and decode messages in them without needing an epilepsy warning every time you use it.
Edit: unless you meant generating and reading IR through them, in which case it might not work at all
I still have mine on my phone, one of many reasons I haven’t “upgraded”.
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Is that you FlossyCarter? 😂
I just bought a USB C adapter two weekends ago. Lives on my keychain for when I’m somewhere with a TV that’s a little too loud.
If you really want to control your TV from your phone, why not just use an app to control it over the local network that’s probably available if your TV has been released in the past 10 years or so? Doesn’t even have to be in line of sight for that.
In my experience, the apps are extremely spotty. That’s besides privacy concerns.
The “bare minimum for a non-disposable, consumer friendly, half environmentally responsible phone” starter pack.
Also the custom ROM ability should not be merely a bonus. IMO it needs to be legally mandatory even above standardised charging connectors. It costs effectively nothing to implement because the base OS and general architecture supports it by default, the manufacturer simply needs to not disable it, and it is by far the most important thing for keeping a device from becoming unusable and possibly even a cybersecurity risk with age. Also just in principle, I paid for the hardware I should be able to put my own software on it.
Samsung did NOT like reading this
Remember when Samsung used to advertise repairibility, storage expansion, replaceable battery as selling points over the iPhone? iFixit used to have them as a gold example of a high end and repairible smartphone back in like 2014/2015, and they were the most popular CyanogenMod devices other than the OnePlus One for quite a while, and even then only because the OnePlus One came with it while Samsung phones were the most popular for users separately installing the ROM. Then they basically went and made the Android iPhone smh
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yup imagine not being able to run anything you want on your own device. it should be mandatory
I want my notification light back so badly!
I agree! And it flashed different colors for different notifications! Things were awesome!
Didn’t even realize the led was something that had been removed. Mine has it on the upper edge, which is fine, although I’d prefer it on the front face so it can be ‘muted’ by flipping the phone over
My android flashes around the edge of the screen when there’s a notification, whether I’m using it or not.
How do you customize it?
There used to be a notification light settings panel in Settings. I don’t have a. Notification light anymore, so I’m not sure where yours would be.
Wait, aren’t most phones OLED? Wouldn’t it be trivial to light up a few pixels in the corner of the screen when it’s off? Do phones not do this (I’m still running my S7 into the ground so I have a dedicated LED)?
It’s not trivial. An LED only needs power to light up, an OLED Pixel always needs the GPU to be powered on and it would be a significant power loss to implement a pixel sadly
The full Always On Display (which shows the clock + some notifications) uses less than 1% battery per hour on my ancient S7, are new phones not any better than that?
It doesn’t if the screen is connected directly to the frame buffer which can refresh independently. Whether that’s actually implemented this way in hardware, well who knows, but I suspect it is as that’s useful to display any static image. Then just power up the display driver for a microsecond to refresh the image if needed.
None of this is true. It may happen in practice on some poorly-designed devices, but the “GPU” in the SoC can remain powered off, and the display controller remain in low-power mode.
I mean there’s a ton of phones that have always on displays (AOD)
I have my always on display which gives me icons of the notifications in a predictable place on screen all the time.
My battery still lasts a full day so power concerns not an issue
OLED does see significant power benefits for black pixels but it’s no where close to lighting just a single LED
yeah samsung has a feature for this in good look
Which setting? I don’t think I see it
Huh, you’re right, I don’t see it anymore either. Could be they removed it, or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place.
The Xperia Z2 had a notification light bar, I miss that one especially.
I saw a comment on lemmy some time ago about a foss app that mostly brings it back, but I can’t find it anymore.
It’s not the one I saw, but a quick google search led to this: https://github.com/Chainfire/HoleyLight
I just use the camera notification circle. It works just fine. I can set it to use a notification dot but the circle is cooler
Why do you need it with an OLED screen?
I miss being able to hold my phone comfortably in one hand.
This stupid propping it up with you pink sucks ass and isn’t natural.
I get that they’re basically super computers in your hand, but fuck man
That’s literally my first requirement for a phone, that it be small and actually fit inside my hand without any straining. It gets harder everytime I need a replacement - like, dudes, if I wanted aa small tablet, I’d buy a small tablet. I want a phone.
Yeah, same here. Except it didn’t get “harder” but simply impossible. There is not a single compact android phone on the market. You could get the iPhone se or the iPhone 13 Mini, but the compact iPhones are discontinued as well, so you’d switch ecosystems for a single generation of devices just to then be stranded again.
There are some, I recently discovered this one: https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-star
That is wonderful. Got really excited until I remembered @Opafi said Android. Wish they would release it with a Linux OS.
I have no loyalty to Apple at this point, but I am certainly not leaving just to end up with Google instead.
iPhone 13 Mini
That is surprisingly passable. I have been disillusioned with Apple for so long that I somehow missed a phone I would actually upgrade into intentionally.
I have been kicking myself every since I went to a 7 after I got caught in the rain with my original SE.
Zenfone 10 proves that you can fit a lot of phone in a small place and none if its problems are from its size.
Try a pop socket. Wife got me one and it gets rid of this issue for me.
Pop sockets. I never do the pinky thing.
Personally I don’t have tiny baby hands, so I dont need to worry about that… but it would definitely be nice if there were more options to choose from.
Yeah, but I’ve heard about your baby dick, so I’m fine with smaller hands…
EDIT: Sorry, it was intended as just a silly joke-response, no one’s actually sensitive here!
Yowch, someone’s a little sensitive… Trump, is that you?
There is no evidence to support that holding moden phones have changed bond structure in fingers.
While you’re correct, my own anecdotal evidence says that it’s still uncomfortable as fuck, and I’d rather have a smaller phone. I miss my Nexus One from way back in the day.
Small/thin phones are out there. Check out the Sony Xperia 5, I’m using the 5 IV and it’s a brilliant wee phone and fits in your hand really nicely. Also has a headphone jack and notification LED.
The way I hold my phone I never have to use my pinky while typing and passively holding my phone I use my thumb along the bottom, forefinger up one side and balance the back with my middle finger.
Understandably lots of different shapes and sizes of hands means not everyone can do that but you should be able to find a grip that works for you.
That or buy one of the Sony phones. They are feature rich and offer small models.
Dude literally described a perfect phone
Pretty much.
I’d kill for a notification LED again…
I’ve been working on notifications the last few days and noticed I still had some legacy code there to set the notification LED orange. Broke my heart to remove it…
Aren’t there phones which still have led? Though I guess you can’t test it
I’m sure they still exist, and I know there are apps that can emulate one on an AMOLED display.
Mine does, but then it also has a built-in thermal imaging camera, which is definitely not normal.
Still got one on my Sony Xperia 1 IV
Recently shot myself in the foot after buying a flagship sony, only to find they do not support bootloader unlock specifically on the US variant. It feels like a conspiracy, since it is practically the same hardware and software otherwise.
Still a great phone but I literally purchased it specifically because I thought it had all of these features and an unlockable bootloader
Time to trade in the pixel
For me the always on display on the pixel works well for this purpose. I like the little icons that show up when you have a notification, and I can just glance over to see what app the notification is coming from
Dozens of us, dozens.
So hard when sarcasm describes exactly what I’d want in a phone.
I’m just suggesting this, I don’t actually own one, yet. I’ll probably be buying my next phone from them in the next few years when my current Samsung Galaxy S10e dies.
The Fairphone is huge and doesn’t have a headphone jack.
Is there a phone that still has all these features?
If a phone hit all of these, and added 6 years of guaranteed (timely) OEM OS updates, I would pay upwards of $2,000+.
OEMs hit me up - I’ve got a credit card ready to go right now.
FairPhone 5 is doing 8 years of software updates with 5 versions of Android updates and 3 more years of security updates.
Not small and no headphone jack, unfortunately.
No notification LED either, locked to /e/ in the US for keeping warranty, no buy.
Fairphone is damn close in spirit though, especially in the EU market.
What does locked to /e/ mean?
“Can I revert to Google stock Android?
Technically yes, but note that this will void your warranty and support with us”
I wouldn’t give them my money entirely because of this one line, personally.
Sony, except the battery, but that is coming with new EU regulation.
Actually cheap phones often have more of these things, although it’s getting rarer.
Sony’s phones aren’t small.
They’re skinnier and shaped in a more compact way. And I think the lower models are still smaller, aren’t they? Even if not exactly the compact/mini models they used to make.
Their aspect ratio is much wider. Still, they’re not using this to make smaller phones but simply make phones that are just as wide as other phones even taller, making the top of the screen even harder to reach. The Xperia 10 and 5 Vs are both 68 mm wide, which is just as wide as a zenfone, but 8.5 mm taller.
Yea, and Zenfone 10 is the “small” phone, isn’t it? So this is as wide as that, and much skinnier than usual phone sizes. The assignment said “compact”, not “small”.
The zenfone is sometimes called small because that phablet is absurdly one of the smallest phones you can get right now. Still, that doesn’t make it small or compact. The XZ1 compact was 64x129 mm. The zenfone is 68.1x146.5 mm. And with those bezels on the older Sony, the top part of the display were actually in reach of your thumb. The zenfone has a 5.92 inch display… That’s not small. You know which phone is just a μ wider but also smaller than the zenfone? The fucking galaxy S22. The Samsung flagship. Those aren’t compact or small and the fact that people call them that in the absence of actually small android phones doesn’t make it any better. The only compact or small phones right now are the iPhones 13 Mini and the se which are both the last of their kind.
Xperia Ace III (I actually imported one), love the size!
Especially the custom roms.
Xiaomi has all of these, but custom roms are hit and miss.
Xiaomi smartphones are such a pita… Everyone I know who owns one is glad to never buy them again.
True, Xiaomi software is bloat incarnate, but I’m hoping it becomes good with a custom ROM.
There’s nothing wrong with a Xiaomi or one of their subbrands, it’s just byos
Asus zenfone unfortunately doesn’t have a removable battery but good to go on everything else
Fairphone
Not small. No 3.5 mm.
im fairly sure fairphone is getting rid of the audio jack though :-(
What!
A phone for ease of repair removes the jack?
Darn…
Not available in the US.
Fairphone 4 is coming to the US market
In US. Have Fairphone (thanks eBay).
Turns out the galaxy S4 WAS the best phone ever created.
Oneplus one. Hands down. It was as good as S5 with exynos that was thrice the price, allowed custom roms (came with inbuilt cyanogen os) and the sandstone finish was amazing.
And if you want to consider longevity: my Oneplus One is still working. I got it in 2014. How many “great” phones can last 9years these days??
I would say it was OnePlus 3. When they finally added an OLED screen
The Samsung Galaxy S4 made me a meme at my local network provider store between 2013 and 2015. That model just kept on breaking for no discernible reason.
My first S4 (S4 0), the one that I actually bought with my new service plan, held up nicely for about half a year. Then, it started to randomly power off. Using my phone as my alarm in the morning, I overslept several times due to this. It also just randomly turned off in my pocket, and later even in my hand. I was able to replicate the error in the store. They replaced the phone with a new one (S4 1).
The entirely brand-new phone had a swelling battery after three months, which I replaced out of pocket with a new original one. This one, too, bulged up soon. A third, off-brand battery did the same. Back to the shop I went. Of course, they told me it ought to be user error, which I couldn’t disprove on the spot. So I offered to insert one of their brand new batteries and leave my phone with them for two weeks, using a loaner. They accepted and, lo and behold, the phone inflated that battery, too, just lying in their shop drawer being charged. This got me my second replacement device (S4 2).
This phone had no electronic problems. The screen, however, sat visibly snuck between the bezels. I applied a then-novel glass screen protector to the screen instead of the usual adhesive films. The screen developed tension cracks below the screen protector. Back in I went and got the screen replaced under warranty (to my own surprise). I even had them apply a new protector screen which had a little bubble around a speck of dust at the bottom. We were on first name basis at this point, so we laughed about it, arguing that the bubble needn’t annoy me too, since I’d be back soon anyway.
I was back soon, anyway. The screen cracked again. They remembered the bubble, saw I hadn’t dabbled with the protector, and surmised that the fault needed to be this phones faulty manufacturing. I got the third replacement (S4 3). It’d be my last one, too.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 was a great phone, in and of itself. It had great features at a competitive price point, was really slim and offered good performance while not entirely buying into the whole phablet trend. I liked it, in concept. The people at “my” cellular shop assured me that it was, in fact, freaky how often I had problems with the model. They were said to be as reliable as the current iPhones.
My last Galaxy S4 started to show the known power-off issue a few months shy of 2 years since my original purchase, meaning the EU-mandated warranty was about to run out. I sold it as partly defect and got a different brand phone.
Either I’ve had good luck or you’ve had shit luck with the S4 lol
My s4 still sits in a drawer by my desk and works perfectly and I got it when it was released.
Ugh I hate how true this comment was.
Honorary commendation for the lg v20 as well.Truly a legendary phone, just like the Nexus 6P
LG v20 was the pinnacle IMO. I’m still on mine because I can’t find anything that isn’t a downgrade in functionality.
Is it still as slim as I remember? Quite a fat back but still.
I have a case on mine but yea without that it’s slim as you could want.
RIP power user geared phones
Everything Android is now tooled for the hyper casual iPhone leaning demographic since they are the majority.
I miss the notification LED
I don’t understand why that one has gone away. Like, the 3mm audio jack made waterproofing difficult and was big. But that doesn’t apply to the notification LED, does it?
I really miss that feature because now I have no indicator of a notification, short of the major battery drain of setting the screen to always be on. I remember even customizing the colour so that I could tell when I had important notifications. Now I often have to double tap my phone just to check if I have any notifications. So dumb.
Even the water resistance thing is a lie
Wait wait new phones don’t have those anymore?
No they can only fold in half. We still need to do some research to implement notification LED technology.
I haven’t had a phone with one since the Galaxy S7, but always on displays have replaced them for notifications at a glance.
The s9 had it, rip in piss notification led.
huh, you are right! I really thought that my phone had it, but after checking it has no notification dot.
Damn, that was useful AF, with personalized notification colors for specific contacts. I guess that now smartbands kinda replaced the dot, which is why I didn’t realize after 1 year of using it lmao.
Oh look, phones from circa 2017!
More than anything I want a hardware keyboard.
No, not Bluetooth, not tacked on, not in a case, not vibrating emulation of buttons, not a half kilo Linux phone for terminal use, just a regular vertical phone with a keypad ffs.
Don’t tell me it’s difficult, when we get a dozen new gaming handhelds a month. They have buttons and Android. Don’t tell me it’s too expensive if Chinese factories can make a phone or handheld under 100€. Don’t tell me there are no suitable displays, when there clearly are displays of all shapes and sizes. Don’t tell me there’s no interest when there are thousands of phone models on the market and everyone is fighting to find any niche to squeeze into. It’s clearly absolutely doable, it’s been done both well and cheap, just the phone vendors are absolutely dense.
I heard it had something to do with Blackberry owning a patent/copyright/trademark (don’t know which), so phone makers would have to lease the right to do it from them. And Blackberry just… isn’t interested, I guess?
I heard the same, but that doesn’t explain how there’s been phone models with keypads both before and after BB.
Also, I doubt Chinese phone makers give a fuck about patents. There was a cheap qwerty phone with KaiOS sold only in India, and I suspect it wasn’t sold anywhere else exactly to avoid worldwide patent problems. But honestly who cares, just make it and people will import it.
I used to use a phone by Siemens that had a hardware keyboard, and an HTC after that. If they have something blocking, they must license it out. However, I doubt they do.
I just realized a folding phone would be a great platform for a keyboard. When closed, the keyboard would be on the back, with a screen on the front. Open it to reveal the big screen on the inside, flip over to type on the keyboard using the front screen.
That could work on a flip-style foldable. Actually you don’t even need it to be foldable, just a regular screen on one side and screen+keypad on the other side. I wonder if that’s less or more likely to happen, since in the past few years we’ve had more phones with multiple displays than with keypads, and phone makers are obsessed with displays.
A problem is that we “have” to have those gigantic cameras with 15 lenses that take up half of the back, so with that mindset there’s not enough space for both a screen and keypad.
Particularly for work, geez.
I kept my old-ass text- only BBerry with the keyboard and side scroll wheel as long as IT let me have it, they made me go to a touch screen which, frankly, sucks for handling correspondence.
For my own phone, yes more screen real estate for videos and pics.
My Fairphone 3 ticks all these boxes lol
I wanted a FairPhone, but they have yet to sell officially in the US and I couldn’t afford to deal with the potential difficulties involved with not having the right bands.
To me its a no brainer for them to start selling in the US. Brands like Framework are getting a lot of hype for their reparability and longevity. Being a mobile brand stepping in to offer a smartphone to compliment Framework’s laptops could be fantastic. Plus there’s a wave of people demanding right to repair legislation in the US, Fairphone would do well to harness that I think.
Custom ROMs should be first on the list
Just ordered the 5 despite them removing the audio jack… Yeah I’m a bit salty about that
My ultimate phone would be a fairphone with audio jack, fingerprint reader, sd slot, and support for custom roms like calyxos. I would buy that in an instant.
Again, Fairphone 3 ticks all those boxes. Though I’m not 100% about Calyxos. I know it can run LineageOS or /e/OS instead of stock android. If it can run those, its likely that it can do Calyxos too.
The only thing that it doesn’t do from that list is the audio jack.
Yeah I know what you mean. At the very least, you can get a dongle and use aux headphones that way, but we shouldn’t have to ffs
Samsung’s industrial smartphone line checks all boxes still
Even custom ROM? Genuinely wondering.
Not a lot of ROM development that I can see unfortunately
Link please… :)
Xcover
Oh yea. Even has Android 13!
I just upgraded to it the other day from /e/OS which was on Android 11 I think.
Unfortunately, 1080p 60fps LCD display is way too bad for me to consider it.
Is it the LCD display? I don’t even have a monitor on my PC that’s better than 1080p 60Hz should be fine for a phone
There’s a noticeable difference in higher framrates in phones even on general usage.
Fairphone 5 has 1224x2700 90 Hz
We are talking about fairphone 3 though? And fairphone 5 has really shit battery life, no headphone jack and a mediocre at best camera for it’s price point.
Bruh what kind of extra special eyes do you have 😳
As a sidenote I do find it funny that my FP3 can record at 120fps… more than the built in display’s framerate lol
man, i wish i had one
TIL: I am a cultist.
Same. Apparently demanding the bare minimum of user modifications, and tried and true technology, is being a cultist?
I’d apply that label to the iEcosystem users than us android bois.
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