I’d forgotten all about the notification LED. I wonder, could you flash a small part of an OLED display to achieve something similar while still being low power?
I loved it. I set up all these different colors to tell me what the priority was for checking. SMS was green, email was yellow or something, and FB (so cool back then) was blue. I really miss that, could just glance at it and know if it was worth risking pulling out your phone in school
Miss this too. And you could customize the number of flashes so 3 rapid green flashes was so-and-so’s WhatsApp message.
Samsung S21 absolutely has a multicolour notification LED, but the only time it gets used is POST.
headphone jack mostly because it was the most consumer unfriendly decision removed purely to make phone companies more money
In order, I’d say SDcard slot, notification light, 3.5mm jack
My Zenfone 8 has two out of those three features. ;p
I know they dont all remove it, but man audio jack phones were awesome. My usbc adapter sucks and bluetooth is spotty and low res.
I bought a modern off brand with an audio jack and micro SD, because why would I spend 3 times more for less features?
Notification led that is separate from the display. Custom per-app colour and blink pattern.
Open Bootloaders, 3.5mm jacks, SD Card readers.
Screens without holes in them.
I’m a Xperia weirdo because the one I have still rocks a 3.5mm jack, expandable storage and a camera outside the screen. Not only are some of those gone from this year’s equivalent, but it is 1500 bucks now, which is absurd. I went to a phone search engine and looked up that exact feature set and it turns out there are exactly zero phones that include those now.
I genuinely don’t understand why people think the way to compete with Samsung is doing a worse version of their exact product. It’s so dumb. Or maybe it’s true and it’s the people who are dumb. Because everybody says these things, but people seem to buy candybars with puncholes and no physical headphne support or expandable storage or IR blasters.
(also Xperia weirdo, checking in)
This year’s 1vii - which I did unfortunately pay said $1500 for - still has all of those. Hole-puch free display, SD card slot, headphone jack.
It’s lost the dedicated notification LED, but - aside from the change from a 21:9 to 19:9 display which I don’t love, but is far from a deal-breaker - that’s the only other outward change from the 1ii I had before.
Still the best waterproofing in the industry too, absolutely can’t fault Sony there.
I hate how the camera on my phone blocks part of the screen. Can’t they just have the lens a bit higher up
I have never understood this argument. The camera never blocked the screen. The screen moved up and around the camera. It’s either that, or you get a forehead/chin.
What do you people want? Pick one.
I don’t want a camera in the first place. I haven’t taken a selfie since 2014.
But if you’re going to have one you don’t need a forehead/chin. My Xperia can fit a camera in a “forehead” of under 2mm. Thinner than most punchholes and on par with the “forehead” of many mid-range phones WITH a hole. And it gets more room for a full second front firing speaker, to boot.
They could have spent all this time making the “forehead” thinner like that. Instead, they obsessed with fitting the body to the screen and added an annoying hole to it. Typically one that is deeper into the screen than a small camera space would otherwise, so if you want to give up the screen space to avoid the distraction you end up with a WAY bigger “forehead” than my Xperia has.
So no, punch holes and notches are dumb, they don’t expand the screen meaningfully and they provide no functionality. They’re a bug, not a feature. I’d take an under-screen selfie camera at most, and those are very rare these days, too.
My Xperia can fit a camera in a “forehead” of under 2mm. Thinner than most punchholes and on par with the “forehead” of many mid-range phones WITH a hole. And it gets more room for a full second front firing speaker, to boot.
And people wonder why the Xperia costs so much lol. That shit costs a lot of money to properly engineer, money most people don’t want to pay.
It certainly doesn’t cost more than an under-screen display where you need to both engineer a tiny screen of less dense see-through pixes AND the right setup to counter the blur you induce on the software side.
All the Xperia needs is a camera small enough that you can put it right against the top edge, so… I mean, it’s not going to be a huge high resolution sensor, but it’s good enough for what it needs to be. It’s certainly not the major driver of cost for the device. The rear tele camera that has a movable optical zoom is probably a bigger issue (and not particularly good, they could have gone with something cheaper).
It certainly doesn’t cost more than an under-screen display where you need to both engineer a tiny screen of less dense see-through pixes AND the right setup to counter the blur you induce on the software side.
But that’s my point. It’s cheaper to just build the screen around the camera.
See what I did there? The camera never removed screen real estate. The screen never had that real estate to begin with, unless it was engineered in a way that allowed it, which is not common yet.
I used to hate the notch - until I bought a OnePlus 6. Only then did I understand that the camera didn’t cut into the screen, rather the screen grew around the camera. The holepunch is an evolution of that. Apple made it work for them with the whole “dynamic island” thing, and at this point nobody really seems to care about the cutouts anymore anyway. Except for a few overly vocal morons online.
Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not arguing for holepunches and notches to stay forever, and progress in that area should be appreciated and more widely adopted. That said, I’m getting really fucking tired of seeing the same “holepunch/notch bad because Xperia exists” argument hashed out over and over again. That Xperia is $1500, and the fact that it’s not a Galaxy or iPhone puts it at a massive disadvantage already. The average person has never heard of Xperia devices, and refusing to consider that viewpoint puts your argument at an even further disadvantage.
I do not, in fact, see what you did there.
You need a small camera to put it on a small bezel. But also, you need a small camera for a small punch hole, which is something that all flagship devices actively try to follow.
It’s clearly true that the camera removes screen real estate if the screen of the Xperia 1 and the screen of the other phones have the same aspect ratio and size (the Xperia 1 is on the small side of modern flagships, but… yeah, they do), so the difference is between having a screen with a 2/3 mm bezel above it or having the exact same size and resolution screen with a hole in it. The screen is the same, one of them has a hole in it… so the hole is taking screen away.
And even if that wasn’t the case and the screen was getting smaller, the hole is in the middle of your image. A smaller uninterrupted screen is better than an image with a hole in the middle. I don’t understand how that is debatable, unless one is, you know, a bit of a moron. Yet here we are.
Now, I will give the notches that at least they poke from the top of the screen, so one could make the argument that the image isn’t supposed to go over the line of the notch, and instead that space is for notifications and images should be coded to stay below that line. But of course then you have a WAY bigger “forehead” than any notchless phone would, and that still doesn’t hold with the fact that most modern notches and punch holes are very clearly designed for the image to wrap around them in normal media viewing.
I do concede that most morons do not seem to care about the selfie camera, but hey, most morons also do take selfies, which is something I can’t really wrap my head around. Then again, if truly nobody cared, then the industry wouldn’t have spent a ton of money engineering under-display cameras and all sorts of flip cameras before deciding the compromises weren’t worth it.
It’s just a thing people have learned to live with on their least important device, like non-replaceable batteries, fixed, overpriced storage and lack of connectivity. The industry decided that was the weirdly enshittified trendy thing and consolidated around it and a lot of people find it annoying, just… not annoying enough to do anything about it. Welcome to the 21st century, I suppose.
Weirdly, you may have sold me on the 1 VII better than the guy telling me it’s good. I may need to anchor myself into the sensible choice even at a premium before the enshittification train leads to a single design (two, if you count foldables that turn into a shitty tablet in exchange for being exceedingly frail and expensive).
Because too many reviewers and buyers complained about “foreheads” and “chins”. As soon as the big makers went edge-to-edge in all four directions with notches/holepunches for cameras everyone else hopped on the bandwagon.
I think this is a One UI 7 thing, but the battery indicator for connected Bluetooth devices has completely disappeared. The only way to check the remaining battery life of my connected headphones or speakers is through a third party application, I can no longer find a way to do it in the OS itself.
I can see it on my pixel, but it might be because I have the app for my earbuds. I’ll test.
I have a pair of Galaxy Buds (1st Gen) and they are the only headphones that still display a battery icon. Not sure if I’m missing something obvious but it feels very much like the type of anti-consumer walled garden change Samsung would make these days in its “copy Apple” era.
USB mass storage mode. Some Android phones can’t do it anymore. I always thought the ability to select a dock image your phone would offer up to a of to boot off of was the coolest feature one of the things that made this iPhone user envious but it’s becoming less common for such a feature to still work in Android.
I liked the little led light at the top that would blink for notification
finger print scanner being on the back of the phone not under the screen. and headphone jack
Remember folks, What you know is protected. What you are is not.
Cops can force you to use the fingerprint scanner.
i use graphene os and have 2fa fingerprint and pin on stock android ifs bad
Luckily you dont have to give up using the fingerprint scanner if you believe in your ability to shutdown/restart your phone before you are taken into custody (it should require the passcode again in this case).
Going from my old pixel 5 rear-scanner to an in-screen scanner ahs been a nightmare. I have dry hands and i have gone from a <0.5s unlock to a 3-10s unlock depending how many times i need to scan or lick my finger, wipe it off then scan, or usually failing scans/giving up and typing in pincode.
“Oh my child is doing something funny or i quickly need to gake a photo of something…aaaaand its gone”. It is really fucking frustrating missing something, or even just trying to check a notification or timer quickly and having to stop and go through the whole dance of just unlocking the phone.
Seriously considering just going back to typing the fucking pincode 50 times a day.What phone do you have? I have literally never had any issues with the on screen fingerprint readers on any of my samsung phones. It literally still takes less than half a second if that to unlock
While I fully sympathise and agree, most android phones have a camera shortcut that doesnt need you to unlock with fingerprint. just swipe up the camera icon usually bottom right on lock screen
My shortcut is to double-tap the power button. Works to bypass the lock screen for the camera, though going anywhere else including the gallery then asks for a fingerprint or pattern/etc.
I liked it on the power button more. My Xiaomi had it there and it was incredibly fast.
Just worked. Pixel 7 is nightmarish, plus blasts white light into your eyes late at night
Nexus 5 had the best finger print reader i’ve ever used. I still miss it to this day.
Do you mean Pixel 5? The Nexus 5 didn’t have a fingerprint scanner.
Samsung had a little pressure sensitive area at the bottom of phone screens in the S9 era. It was handy and I had it set up like a hidden home button.
The S9 also had a variable aperture camera, which I feel like could have been developed a lot more.
I also miss notification LEDs. Sure, AOD mostly replaces it, but it was fun setting different colors for people, situations, etc
The Essential phone had a ceramic back that was very comfortable and cool in the hand. Though it was slippery. Another idea that could have been developed further.
The different back materials on the Moto X were very satisfying. The customization of that phone was unmatched!
AOD causes burn in on every single device I’ve ever seen it used on. I want my notification LED back too. Hell, use the OLED display, just flash a colored dot every ten seconds at the top of the screen. Could even move around each flash to prevent burn in. I really miss that notification LED
Android 4.4 lockscreen widgets
Removable battery is #1. My old Galaxy S3 (not even my first phone-yes I’m old) has absolutely godawful battery life but I had I think 4 total batteries around to make sure I could always have it even on a heavy use day. That sucked, but at least it was doable with a really easy process (peel off plastic back, pull out and swap battery, snap the backplate back on).
I keep an old phone around and sometimes use it to play like a video for my cats to watch if they’re laying on my bed when I’m not in there. But it has to stay plugged in because it loses the first 20% in about 15 minutes.
And that phone in particular (a pixel 2) is particularly a pain to replace the battery in the first place.
