For me it’s the notification light you used to find on older phones, was particularly good to know if your phone was charged without picking it up
Swappable batteries in mobile phones.
It will most likely come back due to EU legislation.
Maybe, but swappable =/= replaceable, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but I’m not sure that EU legislation says that phone batteries should be swappable, only replaceable
“ Portable batteries incorporated in appliances shall be readily removable and replaceable by the end-user or by independent operators during the lifetime of the appliance, if the batteries have a shorter lifetime than the appliance, or at the latest at the end of the lifetime of the appliance. A battery is readily replaceable where, after its removal from an appliance, it can be substituted by a similar battery, without affecting the functioning or the performance of that appliance.”
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020PC0798&qid=1703805580803
So we see here that batteries must be replaceable without affecting the function of the device. Yet waterproofing is important. What seems more likely to me is that batteries need to be replaceable without opening the entire device and therefore destroying liquid protections as per the proposed law. Easiest way to do that would be something similar to a SIM card tray where a hidden button is pressed to release the battery to swap it. The designers would have to go out of their way to make this process difficult, which the EU also doesn’t want, to avoid making them swappable. And that feature is attractive. Knowing Apple though, it’ll be harder on the base models or batteries will cost too much.
The snippet “if the batteries have a shorter lifetime than the appliance” worries me. Seems to me that modern engineers are capable of making their crap’s lifespan just barely shorter than the projected batty lifespan, and people might just be stupid enough to still buy it.
I mean, the disposable vape market is an extreme example, but somewhat relevant I think.
That being said, if the processor on the LG G5 had kept up with the market better, I don’t see how that couldn’t have been a starting point.
As for waterproofing, my GoPro stays waterproof but the side door opens to give access to the SD card, battery, etc, so it’s absolutely possible.
Not really. EU legislation is about the right to repair, not about swappable batteries on the run
How does one safely repair a lithium-ion battery without just swapping it for a working one?
It’s the difference between sitting down for 20 minutes unscrewing various components to get to the damaged battery you need to replace, vs. popping off the back cover and simply swapping out one dead battery for a charged one anytime you run out of power. The former is replaceable. The latter is swappable.
This. Like ten years ago, when Samsungs had swappable batteries, they were super proud of it. They would advertise it as a feature that Apple doesn’t have.
When I was at a festival, Samsung had an activation where you could tweet at them with your phone model and location and they would send someone with a full battery to trade you for yours. It was an amazing free service that I used so many times, and every time, the jealousy on the faces of all the iPhone people was palpable. Then one year, they quietly removed the swappability from their new phones.
Swappable batteries are such a huge feature that most people don’t even know that they want.
3.5mm headphone jack
HTC just came out with a phone that has a headphone jack AND expandable memory. I hope they go for a gen 2 in the near future since it had some kinks to work out, such as a curved glass screen, becase then it would be just about everything I could ask for in a phone.
People keep going on about that and I get it from the point of not having to charge headphones all the time. But to me that is a very mild inconvenience compared to having to deal with those fucking cables all the time. I hate cables so damn much.
Here’s the crazy thing tho… You could just not use it and choose to use blue tooth still.
Oh, my problem isn’t with charging them. They actually hold a charge for a super long time.
I’d like bluetooth earbuds a lot more if I could find some that aren’t “smart.” If I put on a beanie, I bump them. If I remove one earbud to converse, I bump it. I’ve not once intentionally used a gesture-based control on an earbud for anything else other than undoing the situation I’ve caused by bumping them. Otherwise, I control everything with my phone. If I’m working out, I just select my playlist, mute notifications, and I don’t have to touch anything after that. Gesture-based earbuds are not for me.
I really don’t think there are dumb bluetooth earbuds, though. At least, I haven’t been able to find any.
And I don’t mind cables as much as you do. I think my favorite earbuds would be those that are connected to each other by a cable, but again – only if they were not smart.
This going away has just make the Tiktok tide that much more horrendous. I work in a school. The hallways are nothing but that horrid shit blasting out of hundreds of bad speakers.
You don’t think it’d still be the same even with the headphone jack still there? Wireless headphones and converters for wired headphones do exist, they just don’t care.
There are often enterprise versions that still have it. Like the S10E for example.
Yes, and I’m thinking my next phone will be one of those.
I have a much better time with wired earbuds than with bluetooth.
Forgot my bluetooth headphones the other day on a long trip and the 3.5mm jack saved my rear end.
Just needed to stop at a shop briefly for some cheap plug-in buds and I was no longer listening to babies screaming on the journey. As a bonus, it also didn’t interfere with me charging my phone
I’d like bluetooth earbuds a lot more if I could find some that aren’t “smart.” If I put on a beanie, I bump them. If I remove one earbud to converse, I bump it. I’ve not once intentionally used a gesture-based control on an earbud for anything else other than undoing the situation I’ve caused by bumping them. Otherwise, I control everything with my phone. If I’m working out, I just select my playlist, mute notifications, and I don’t have to touch anything after that. Gesture-based earbuds are not for me.
I really don’t think there are dumb bluetooth earbuds, though. At least, I haven’t been able to find any.
I have a pair of cheap Skullcandy’s that have physical buttons instead of touch sensors. The buttons are basically impossible to use without smooshing the earbud into your ear trying to click it, but it also means it’s really hard to accidentally click them. Probably as close as you can get to dumb Bluetooth earbuds.
I don’t even understand why someone would want controls on their earbuds, much less for it to be such a widespread issue, but honestly I’m just going to make sure my next phone has a 3.5mm jack
Could always get one of the beanies that have bluetooth speakers in 'em. It’ll solve your problem of bumping your earbuds, (though not through a necessarily “good” option). Or, you could use the wired bluetooth headphones like these.
As another alternative, there’s the apple airpods, which, as far as I can tell, have not gestures but some weird-ass pseudo capacitive button that makes a sound when you press them. I did just realize though, that if you have an apple device they’ll automatically pause playback when you take a headphone out (I think), so that may not be your cup of tea. However, if you have an Android, this addition won’t work unless you have an app like CAPods (which you can turn on or off in the app, so no worries there). There’s also the downside of not having access to many features like toggling through the different modes (active noise canceling or whatever other bullshit like that), not being able to natively see the battery of the case or earbuds (though, like with the aforementioned feature, using an app like CAPods you can see it), and some others that I can’t recall at the moment.
Sorry about the length of this reply, I was originally just going to mention the bluetooth beanies as a joke, but I have nothing else to do at the moment, so why not share my experiences? Anywho, that’s my two cents, this could help, it could be utterly useless, you could already know all of this, you may not even read the wall of text, etc. etc… Do as you will with this.
You don’t happen to know if there’s some open-source software for Android that might be similar to CAPods? Tbh I’m probably never going to buy either airpods or the brand-name Samsung ones, but I’d imagine there might be a more universal solution?
Yeah, I don’t actually recommend buying airpods unless you got them for free if you’re an Android user (that’s the only reason I’m using airpods atm).
As to open source, I believe CAPods is, unless you’re referring to an open source app for most headphones (which upon second thought you probably are).
As to that question, CAPods, according to their GitHub page, supports a few Beats devices, this app for Galaxy Buds on Windows/Linux devices, and this one for Huawei Freebuds device(s?).
Overall, the closest I could find was GadgetBridge, which has support (partial or full) for a few Samsung devices, one Nothing, a few Sony, and Bose(?), though, I did keep running into internal server errors, so it might be out of date.
Not really, it’s mostly only budget phones that have it nowadays. The S10E(which stands for ‘essential’ btw, not ‘enterprise’) is almost 5 years old, not exactly representative of the modern phone market.
To be fair, on the modern phone market it doesn’t really matter whether you spend 300 or 1000. They’re all decent ish
Privacy.
Try to let go of Google everything. Start by ditching Chrome and Chromium based browsers
I switched to duck duck go who knows how many years ago. Haven’t looked back.
Can’t even remember when I started using Firefox, but that was probably around the time when Opera became popular. Before Crome existed, I was already on FF and never regretted staying there. At that point, I was already somewhat aware of privacy matters, so switching to Chrome seemed completely stupid to me.
Same, but I find for about 1% of sites I have to load them in chromium. Just works much better
It was the same thing with IE back in ancient times. A popular browser violates web standards so many sites were designed with that rogue browser in mind. If you use a browser that actually follows the standards, some sites just won’t work properly for you.
Have you tried not shitting with the door open?
That’s funny. Every time somebody says “If you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about,” I reply, “Do you shit with the door open?”
But now the door isn’t just open. It feels like Uncle Sam is pissing between your legs.
Absolutely the damn LED. I would love to trade the stupid never-being-used selfie-cam for a damn 5 cent LED.
And swappable batteries. And a headphone-jack. And root by default (imagine you winpc came with no admin-pwd. Lol)… And…
I used to love customising the notification colour on my old phones, so good.
I miss my headphone jack so damn much, I’m over Bluetooth earbuds breaking constantly and being so damn expensive and low quality.
Then buy phones with headphone jacks. Mine has one, I dont buy ones without it.
If it matters for you to have it, dont buy phones that cut it. If models with it keep selling, theyre less likely to ditch it.
What I don’t understand is why the notification LED was removed in the first place? It can easily be put under the screen.
The LED was so helpful, and it’s so annoying when I don’t see an important message for hours, because I haven’t used my phone.I’m guessing… they don’t want us deciding whether to engage with our phones, they want us looking at them more. If that means less convenience for us we can get fucked
Because if you can read an LED notification system you have no purpose to pick up the cellphone.
Cellphones are not designed FOR YOU. They are designed by marketeers for you to use.
Once you realize this, all the anti-consumer shit makes sense.
Physical buttons in cars
Repairable phones
Repairable laptops
Resoleable shoes
Hand-crank drills (for those quick and easy projects where dealing with batteries or cords isn’t worth it)
External frames on hiking packs
Actually tough jeans that need to be broken in and last a while
Headphone jack
I miss physical buttons on everything. We’re a tactile species living in a digital purgatory
I switched to the 2022 iPhone SE for this last year only for the EU to pull the usb-c thing toward apple (who of course requires the Apple certified cables now anyways so it solved nothing). and after that happened I know the writing is on the wall for this phone one day because of its design. I’m going to be using it until the very bitter end when not a single app is supported anymore. I will be a physical button warrior to the end.
I agree with all but hand crank drills. If you own a battery drill it’s probably stored with it’s battery and with keyless chucks (that don’t work on a hand crank drill) getting a battery drill ready for work is faster than a hand crank, and it will do the job faster too.
also it looks cool when you change the battery like a gun
Privacy
A built-in scripting language. The TI-83 line of calculators have an app programming language that requires you to side-load code from another computer, but they also have TI-BASIC, which allows you to write a wide variety of scripts right on the calculator itself. This should be standard on all ‘smart’ devices. It’s so stupid to have gigahertz of computing power in your pocket and not be able to do anything without writing the app on another machine.
I know Termux for Android exists and that’s a good start, but I’d like to see something baked right into the OS that has access to all my device’s cool sensors and gizmos. The camera, the microphone, the aux port, the usb port, the accelerometer, the bluetooth antenna… all of those things should be exposed to the user. This would be a really good use case for ‘visual’ programming ala Scratch, since you could assemble a script right from a touch screen instead of having to plug in a keyboard.
Real buttons that you can feel. Hence could use them without looking at the screen.
Headphone jack, bigger batteries, front facing speakers, SD card slot, IR blaster, magnetic field to let you use your credit cards at check out from your phone (MST) - THROUGH THE ACTUAL CARD READER SO THEY DIDN’T NEED GOOGLE/APPLE/SAMSUNG WALLET WHATEVER THE FUCK. I also agree that I miss the light too lol
That said, here’s what I can’t stand in newer phones: camera bumps. Unless you’re a droid x or Nexus get that rocking on any flat service while I’m trying to type shit outta here. I don’t give a shit about my cameras but if they need to be that fat and advanced, just make the rest of the phone that fat and give me the extra battery instead of making a tiny stovetop in the corner. Fuckin weird and dumb. Also camera cutouts in the screen, put that shit under the screen or set it next to a front facing speaker on the bezel. Also bezel-less phones, I know we’re trying to fill our phones with screens but my fat palms don’t care about that when I’m accidentally touching everything on the side while holding it
I was going to mention the IR blaster. I had one on my LG G4 & G5 if I remember correctly. It was so cool! I was so bummed when they stopped having it.
What was it for?
Changing the channel on tvs in public spaces mostly.
My personal pet peeve is pre-installed, un-removable software and apps. My current mobile phone for example has apps that link to twitter, facebook, amazon etc. none of which I will ever use, but you can somehow not delete them. Why do I need to have that virtual junk in my phone?
Printers that work.
A headphone jack, bluetooth sucks, it’s convenient but it sucks. It’s audio quality is bad, it’s latency is bad… it’s just all bad.
Id disagree about bluetooth these days. I have a pair of headset I use daily between my computer and phone. Quality is there, ive done side by side conparisons via 2.4ghz dongle, bluetooth and wired (headset supports all) and I cant hear a difference.
There may not be a difference when you’re sitting in front of a computer but Bluetooth quality can go way downhill if you’re trying to listen to earbuds while your phone is in your pocket or a bag or similar, especially if you’re moving around and/or there’s a lot of electronic interference in the area. My city commute is when I really miss wired listening.
Removable battery and optional modules like the LG G5 : VR headset, DAC, …
Dude, I miss the LG G5 and the V20. Had some pretty good ideas for the time. I liked how the V20 had a tiny always on display so the main display could power down. Although OLED dont have the power drain problem that LCD have when using AOD
Ok, how about features of gadgets that aren’t smartphones?
Go start a thread about it. That’s a pretty vague and broad subject.
That’s the subject of THIS thread, PLUS smartphones, even more vague and broad, though you’d never know it from the comment section.
Most features that smart phones had. Most prodomimantly the micro SD card slot, headphone jack and IR blaster.
I miss IR blaster on my phones, so handy.
There are lots of phones with micro SD and headphone jacks.
My Motorola G60s has either dual sim or sim with SD and a headohone jack. Also has a 120hz screen. Just missing the ol IR blaster
Yeah but they’re all the lower end phones, all the major flagships removed the features three or four versions ago, I don’t want to have to sacrifice camera or screen quality in order to have features that should be built into phones by default
I’m going to say that today, even on lower-end phones, the screen, processor and camera are all pretty decent.
I have a Motorola G31, which cost about 200€ one year ago, when I got it. It has a Micro SD Card Slot and a headphone jack. The screen is plenty good (1440p,60hz) (why would you need 120hz or 4k on a phone) And the camera is also quite nice. It has no fancy features, but it takes pictures and that’s all I need.
From my perspective, flagship phones are impractical and overpriced to say the least.
120hz is amazing for scrolling through feeds, it is absolutely night and day. It is like turning off the annoying motion blur in a video game.
The audio port for headphones and headsets. Replaceable batteries. Extendable storage. Fuckers charge 100x more for every little upgrade now.
To be fair, expandable storage as we’ve had it sucks. MicroSD cards cause a lot of issues, and a good chunk of Android apps block the ability to use them. Connecting an SSD to your phone is a much better experience.
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