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.
I’ve honestly had no issues with Holey Light on my devices since the notification LED went away. Used it on two phones now and haven’t noticed much battery life loss and haven’t had any bugs or configuration issues in a very long time. It is a shame the feature isn’t just built into every device though.
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
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.
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.
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!
😭
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
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.
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
As a OnePlus 7 Pro owner, I absolutely love it. No front camera cutout was one of the reasons I bought it.
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. 😂
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
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.
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).
Front facing stereo speakers were nice.
I miss the HTC One family, such cool phones…
This. I got a Xperia 1 III for the speakers and headphone jack.
Idk if this is a gimmick but I love swiping on the rear fingerprint scanner to pull up/down the notifications and quick settings. I also got an app that lets me swipe left/right on the sensor to adjust the brightness.
Adjusting the brightness with the fingerprint scanner sounds super practical, how’s that app called?
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
Nokia N95 flipping both up and down. I really liked those music player buttons when flipping it down
I loved this phone, was my first ‘smart’ phone
Mine too. And it worked so smooth it didn’t even feel like a “smart” phone. That was peak Nokia
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.
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.
Allo was the best messenger. So many useful features
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.
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.
