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
My 2001 flip phone could schedule sms messages to be sent and it took smartphones a decade ish to add that feature.
The Nexus One had so many features I miss:
Trackball for scrolling
Notification light built into the trackball with customizable colors depending on the app
Back plate came off, replaceable battery
Small and a one handed wonder, the trackball kept my fingers off the screen
It was a replacement for my jail broken iPhone OG, such a better interface for me than the iPhones and it had very basic multitasking when the other guys could only do one app at a time
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I thought the digital trackball of the HTC Incredible was cool as shit. It was my favorite phone and I would still be using it today (not as a phone) if it didn’t have a restart bug that HTC refused to acknowledge.
For real, you sold me on that trackball. That sounds like the coolest feature a phone could have, right down to the multi-color led built in beneath it. I really really hope we see a return to something like that! Touch screens are very useful and have their place but physical buttons/controls are usually preferred when done properly. Here’s a pic of the Nexus 1, that trackball indeed appears to be cool as fuck:
Oh hey, it’s my 2nd smartphone ever. How nostalgic! This phone was built like an absolute tank. It really was a great little phone.
That said, the problem with physical controls is that you either need a larger device or smaller screen to accommodate them. For most people, the tradeoff just isn’t worth it.
For a while, I bemoaned the loss of the physical button bar. Having four (!) indicator lights was really useful to boot. Now I happily use gestures with no looking back.
Would be nice to still see some phones offer this for those who want them, though.
If they can do holepunch cameras they can do holepunch trackballs. That would be the greatest thing ever 👌
I loved the notification light, I had mine programmed to have different colors correspond to different types of notifications and it would buzz at me in response to being picked up as well if I’d missed a call or text.
I forget which Samsung galaxy model it was, maybe S6, but it had a universal IR blaster built into the phone which was super convenient for controlling all of my devices. I did however often abuse the shit out of it by flipping the channels on bar tvs or turning off the stereo receiver and nobody was ever suspecting it was me on my phone. I guess that’s probably why they removed it lol, but it was fun while it lasted.
I’m sad that popup front cameras didn’t catch on. I only remember 2 or 3 phones that had them. For me it’s the perfect compromise - this way you can make an end to end screen without the need for a notch, and since I very rarely use the front camera, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the durability of the popup mechanism. The only real downside I see is that it complicates waterproofing.
Actual keyboards, my Moto Droid was my favorite phone I’ve ever owned. Miss it so much. I’d give anything to have an updated version of it.
AodNotify almost replaced the LED for me. It always locked up my display black every few days so had to stop using it.
Headphone jack.
Everything. We’re down to barebones and marketing now focus solely on camera software updates or phone materials (“now with titanium!” How fucking sad is that?) And they are all selling the same phone.
Some of the most important loses…
Swappable batteries changed travel for me. Always having two extra charged batteries in my backpack, that you could swap top 100% in 20 seconds, made me ONLY use my phone as a free and completely useful tool without any planning or restrictions on my use. Otherwise, you can’t take too many pictures or videos, stream music or video or make video calls too long or you might be fucked when you need phone, GPS, payment or to get a rideshare to where you’re staying.
Audio jack similarly meant freedom. Bluetooth headphones out of battery, broken or one earbud lost? Have a pair of wired in the backpack always add backup. Also better audio quality through wired with DAC on certain models and less daily device load to charge/babysit
secondary screens LG V10 had a bar on top, they also had the T shaped dual screen phone and the secondary screen phone case. There was just creativity and attempts at innovation.
microSD expandable memory, again less and less available and this was about freedom - fuck your cloud storage add its data leaks, corruption and redaction. I own my data, you don’t control it.
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.
In smartphones
- Replaceable batteries
- Headphone jack
- Software unlocked parts
- Root-able phones
In PCs
- No-RGB components that only prioritise performance
- No nonsense PC cases that are just a black box with awesome airflow
- GPUs that don’t need a mortgage
Aren’t notification LEDs somewhat obsolete now that we have always on displays? One advantage could be that they are less power hungry than keeping the screen / touch panel alive all the time. But in theory one could just create a permanent “notification LED” with an always on display, then it’s the same thing from a user’s perspective.
Replaceable battery, micro SD card slots are hard to come by these days, too.
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.
You have to embrace them. That’s how that giant shit is rolling.
I just use my cock, mate
Good thought, that way you can make your phone look massive.
Hold on, I think I got it the other way
The notification light would also let you know what type of notification it was by colour on my old Samsung Note.
