Easily notification light. People always say “oh, it’s totally obsolete with always on displays”. But with a notification light I could focus on other stuff and the blinking light got my attention better. With the AOD, I always catch myself glancing at my phone. Also, the light’s color clearly indicated which app caused the notification. I had White for calls, Green for Whatsapp, Yellow for the ebay app, Red for GMail and so on. “You can do all that with an OLED screen! It only lights up the pixels that-” Can you, though? All apps that I tried were utter garbage. Buggy performance, very battery hungry and very cumbersome to configure. I don’t know if custom firmwares actually have that feature in a usable state nowadays, as I cannot root my phone anymore without losing core functionalities like online banking.
Yeah, everything tends to go to shit with time. I miss my Galaxy S2.
Can’t believe I forgot all about this. It was the one thing I was sad to lose when I upgraded from my Nexus 5 to the Google Pixel. So simple but so useful.
even going from my xperia 1 iv to xperia 1 v, i’m so sad I don’t have a notification LED anymore, when it’s plugged in to charge I have no idea if it’s charging, fully charged, or what… without enabling my AOD which I don’t want to do, i have no way of knowing if there are any notifications without turning on my display
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Can you, though
You can. The technology is good but like many things the implementations are often kinda shyte
Apparently nearly everything I look for in a phone. Others have said IR blaster, side squeeze, notification light, and pop-up front camera, all of which were amazing.
I’d add an unlocked bootloader (I bought it, it’s my phone to do what I want with), removable battery (hello instant charging), and a small form factor (so sick of needing two hands to do anything).
Oof, so true. They remove more and more features that are important to me each generation. Still rocking a 4a for the headphone jack and recently, my fingerprint sensor has shit the bed. Well now that I’ve gotten used to having the sensor on the back, Pixel phones use a crappy under the display one.
Good news on the battery front: the EU is mandating that smartphones have user-replaceable batteries by 2027. It’s not clear if “readily removable” will mean “hot-swappable,” but… hope springs eternal, I guess?
Even if it requires some screws to swap that’s still good for breathing extra life into old phones.
You read my mind
Not so much a gimmick, as much as something that seemingly went extinct that I miss: rear fingerprint sensors. I loved them on my Nexus/Pixels, and the in-screen one on my 6a is way less consistent and convenient.
Also it flashbangs me when I try to unlock my phone at night.
I had a side/power button fingerprint sensor on my S10e. The S22’s in-screen one is cool and all, but I really miss how my phone would be unlocked before it even came out of my pocket.
My Samsung Galaxy S9 had that, at least until something happened to the sensor. It was in my phone holder in the car, and the holder fell while I was driving. It’s possible my dog hit it with his claws, I don’t know what actually killed it, but it definitely happened during that drive.
I got a new sensor but never installed it, because I never got around to getting the double sided tape I would need. Then I cracked the screen…
I’m still on a pixel 4a, and I am terribly disappointed to hear that those have gone away.
Pixel 2 XL here, the rear fingerprint scanner on this is the only fingerprint scanner on any of my devices that works flawlessly, every time. Why on earth would they remove this???
[waves arms in the air] INNOVATION!
😭
I use a phone case with a cover so rear scanners were a pain for me.
My latest phone has a sensor on the power button and it’s not too bad but misreads happened way less often with a rear sensor.
That pop up camera on the OnePlus 7 pro.
That thing was cool as fuck. My roommate got the phone and I was VERY jealous even though I had a OnePlus 8T at the time.
I just switched away from my OP7P after several years of owning and loving it, and I do miss that pop up camera. You never had to worry you were going to take a selfie you weren’t ready for. 😂
As a OnePlus 7 Pro owner, I absolutely love it. No front camera cutout was one of the reasons I bought it.
OP 7 Pro is my current phone, I don’t use the selfie cam often but it’s always neat looking at how they designed that feature
Material You. I wondered why they wasted resources for … colors. But it’s so nice to have a consistently colored UI across apps and across dark/light modes, and I wished that more apps would support it. Also, those pastel colors are less stressful for the eyes than the previous grey/blue.
I know it’s not everyone’s taste but I really like it.
I have to respectfully disagree here. I would like to be able to choose what that color is. I HATE when I use a picture of my orange cat for a background and all my apps are brown.
If there’s some way to override it and choose your own color, I haven’t found it.
You can choose it, get a different colored cat
Lmao i do have a calico and she’s my home screen bg. My orange cat is my lock screen.
You can choose from several colors, not just your background colors.
Go to Wallpaper & Style > Basic colors. (on a Pixel; it might be slightly different on other phones)
Look into the app Repainter. It isn’t free and needs root or Shizuku access but does the trick.
Hey man, I know it’s been 3 months and idk why I’m only just now seeing this, but you’re a lifesaver. Thanks for the tip. It worked!
Also it’s pretty cool when apps change colors based on wallpaper.
I love it, glad Jerboa uses it
Didn’t know some see it as a gimmick. It’s very good
Over on /r/Android there was a very vocal crowd that saw it not only as a gimmick but actively detested it. In their opinion an UI is only good when it has an AMOLED black background (and 0 px padding between UI elements, but that’s a different topic).
Does IR sensor count? I loved that on older phones so much.
Not a gimmick. It was great to control TVs, air conditioners, audio receivers, and even electronics projects using something like an arduino and an IR sensor. Such a shame that our smartphones have been stripped of so many features as companies have run out of good ideas to increase demand.
I feel like the implementation was a bit gimmicky. I first used an IR transceiver as a remote on a late-model palm and the interface was much better than most apps I found on Android.
I wonder if it would be possible to pack that functionality into a smart-watch
I have one on my PoCo F3 (not old, 2021, a bomb phone when it went out, powerful as a S21 but half the price. It is still way faster than dozens of new cellphones.)
I’m using the IR blaster for my AV receiver 🙂
It’s been gone for a while now, but I really liked the IR blaster to use as a secondary remote when you can’t find the remote because your toddler was playing with it. Dammit Susie!
I use an old remote without batteries for that purpose.
Me sitting here wondering how you control your TV with a remote that doesn’t have batteries…
Lol. I have two.
On my motorola: quick shake side to side to enable flashlight. So easy to use, it’s become second nature. I’ll have to find a way to replicate that on the next phone I get.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arlosoft.macrodroid
MacroDroid! I love my Pixel6a but losing the flashlight motion was rough. Pretty easy to set up with MacroDroid.
Don’t forget the twisting motion to turn on the camera!
Holy crap, I forgot about that feature from my dark-ages G4. That thing was a piece of crap, but I do miss that (and the twist to open camera.)
Gosh remember how that phone didn’t have a compass
Front facing stereo speakers were nice.
This. I got a Xperia 1 III for the speakers and headphone jack.
To show how old I am, a phone without a physical keyboard.
Which is, like, every smartphone?
now
I think he meant to say “touch” keyboard.
Not in 2007
Fingerprint sensors
My phone has an in-display fingerprint sensor and I am never going back.
Mine has one too but I still miss when they were putting them on the back of phones
Was just an easier spot to me
Back of the phone was the best. I could pull my phone out of my pocket and unlock my phone in single motion and decent grip. Plus the swipe gestures for accessing the notifications bar…
Despite enjoying multiple models of the phone I currently have I won’t get a new model because the sensor is on the power button. Back of the phone supremacy under screen is OK if it works, power button sensor can burn in a hole.
Same. The back sensor on my pixel 4a was positioned perfectly for me and didn’t leave one big thumbprint smudge like the in-screen on my 6.
It was also much more responsive
I have a Pixel 6 with underscreen fingerprint reader and I love it. Only wish it was a tad faster and a little less prone to not recognising my thumb occasionally. Hopefully the tech is already better in newer models.
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In case you haven’t already, I’ve found that adding the same fingerprint multiple times makes it a lot more reliable.
Rear power and volume buttons.
To this day my favorite phone remains the LG v10. It has nice metal rails on the side, a rubber removable back, sd card slot, aux port with a high end dac, wide(er) screen, and buttons on the back of the phones right where your indexed finger would rest when holding it.
Figure print sensor on the button didn’t work all that well, but worked better than this shit on screen reader. The buttons being on the back meant your could just grab the phone in anyway with out worrying if you’re gonna Power the phone off, turn the vol down, take a screenshot, etc. This also meant getting it knot phone holders was almost never an issue.
That was the closest an android phone got to perfection. After that they started trying to follow tends and phase out the good parts to the point of leaving the Android market entirely.
Still to this day my favorite phone was the LG Leon. Cheap, durable, small, and the button were on the back!
I absolutely loved my V10, it just felt so nice to hold. Plus it was built like a tank and could withstand a lot.
Can’t say I love the feature but the front facing camera getting “integrated” into the screen isn’t nearly as annoying as I thought it would be.
Power button fingerprint sensors. I had one on my S10e, and I loved it - with the way I held the phone, my thumb naturally rested on the power button, so it was pretty much auto-unlocked.
Now they seem to have fallen by the wayside in favor of in-screen sensors - which are cool, but ever-so-slightly more cumbersome. Ah well, still better than facial recognition.
This is why I loved the fingerprint sensor on the back of my pixel. I would be able to unlock it while taking it out of my pocket.
Samsung is using them still on the Folds. I’ve got one on my Fold 4. Love it.
Tablet computers. My thoughts on the first iPad were that it does everything a laptop, an iPod, and a Kindle all do, but worse. Next thing I knew, they were everywhere. I think traditional laptops are making something of a comeback, though.
My wife has an iPad and after using it for a bit, yeah I get it.
Tablets are great for anything that doesn’t involve typing
I used my Surface Pro all through college, and that thing is amazing. I took all my notes with the pen in OneNote, but it also has has a full desktop OS, so you’re not missing any functionality. Mine is even powerful enough to run some basic CAD modelling, which was a treat for when I didn’t want to have to deal with finding an open computer lab
if you haven’t tried it, the new pens are like three tines as good!
I’m not sure I can justify a new surface pen since I graduated and got a job that doesn’t allow PEDs onsite, but given how good my pen is, the new ones must be great.
Also, when browsing the Microsoft store just now to look at the pen specs, I was shocked to see a bunch of components listed for the Surface Pro 9. Did Microsoft embrace right to repair for that model.
