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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
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.
I'd rather just buy a DAP than randomly replace a perfectly good phone with one that sucks in comparison.
3.5mm headphone jack
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.
There are often enterprise versions that still have it. Like the S10E for example.
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
By far replaceable batteries. You used to be able to purchase physically larger and higher capacity batteries to get insane battery life, but because they would include a larger rear plastic for the phone it would still look normal. Now we have to waste space and lose efficiency with external power banks.
Swappable batteries in mobile phones.
Pretty much everything the Galaxy S5 had
I currently use a FP3 which has 4 out of the 6 features above, which I feel is the best we'll get right now.
Admittedly the Heart rate monitor is more of a gimmick nowadays, especially that it's standard and automatic on most smartwatches and sports watches. Back then when stuff like the Sony Ericsson LiveView and LG W100 watches were popular, they did not have heart rate sensing built in
Not a feature but I do miss phones having side bezels. You could firmly hold your phone and not disturb the content on your phone. I can barely use youtube now because i keep touching my screen apparently
Headphone jacks and small phones
Fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone
Hard disagree here. Your fingers are already on the display to use your phone, fingerprint reader in the front makes far more sense.
Often my phone is on a table, all I need to unlock it is touch the screen. No need to pick it up.
I wouldn't buy a phone with the fingerprint reader in the back.
Meh, I prefer it under the screen personally.
The audio port for headphones and headsets. Replaceable batteries. Extendable storage. Fuckers charge 100x more for every little upgrade now.
Real buttons that you can feel. Hence could use them without looking at the screen.
Not sure if an automatic transmission qualifies as a modern gadget, but I remember push starting my car back in the day when the battery died.
I freaked someone out one time by pop-starting a stick shift car on a hill. He had no idea what I was doing.
My car, which is 24 years old, is a stick shift, but everything else we've owned since then is automatic.
Rootable modable phones, with a 3.5mm headphone jack, SD card slot, and an ultrasonic fingerprint reader cherry on top. Maybe some heart rate monitor sprinkles if you are so inclined. My S10 that I still use checks all of the boxes minus root. It feels like I have a sundae with all the high quality toppings I could want... but no proper ice cream. And I want the whole custom sundae, which these days seems impossible to find.
Most features that smart phones had. Most prodomimantly the micro SD card slot, headphone jack and IR blaster.
I miss how gadgets used to be nifty and little. Every time I get a new phone now I have to stretch my fingers more and more just to hold it.
Good keyboards on computers. At the office, everything are those extremely uncomfortable $5 dell keyboards. At a climbing gym or pool, the liability iPads that you sign forms on is using those really uncomfortable apple keyboards too.
I miss the better keyboards that we had back 25 years ago. Modern box jades bring some of that back for your own PC.
Simplicity.
iPhones are far too big and have too many huge cameras for me. Everything requires a subscription or some login to do anything. Applications and operating systems are updated at the whims of CEOs while the job of UX designers is de-prioritized. Software updates keep breaking established workflows. I can no longer rely on devices or apps to maintain a consistent experience from one year to the next. It's just been years and years and years of disappointment and stress as technology changes for the worse.
All this is pushing me towards a more unplugged lifestyle. Which is a bit ironic given how it adds more complexity with the need to own and travel with more things. A bag of five 'things' that always work regardless of network connection is better than a little tablet that could crash or die or be updated at any moment and having a significant impact on your lifestyle.
There's just no fucking zen anymore. I feel like I'm living inside a simulation built by the same people who brought us Windows 95.
Tactile buttons, all my homies hate cap-sense
Graphic design with depth or shading.
Of course the 3.5mm headphone jack, but also IR Blasters.
Ooh I'd have to say an IR blaster, before switching to an S23 Ultra, my Huawei P20 Pro had one and a notification light. Didn't realise how much I used the IR blaster until it was gone.
I too miss the LED notification light. If you have an amoled display, check this out:
FM receiver on phones + 3.5mn jack was a crucial source of local radio transmissions. I suspect some phones still ship radio receivers but the popular types like Samsungs and iPhones don’t seem to care (or perhaps that competes with their music and podcast markets).
Everything apple and Samsung helped remove from phones to squeeze more pennies out of their customers. Headphone jack, micro SD card slot, ir blaster..... etc
Rechargable bat-trees, the headphone jack, nugget shaped phones (ie. BlackBerry Bold much), and the damn hardware keyboard >:(((
I want a IR blaster again and a front notification light.
Or at least let me easily simulate the notification light without a third part app.
