My 1st phones were around €200, now you only find cheap junk that breaks within a year at that prize point. Having to cough up €500-700 for a phone that lasts a few years sounds excessive. Best phone until now is my '18 Nokia 6.1. Prize was €300 and it’s still going strong.
If you’re on Android, I think this still works. Try setting an alarm for 5 minutes from now and turn your phone off. It should turn back on for the alarm.
Edit: Just tried it and it worked on the native OnePlus clock app, but not on the Google clock.
You mean hardware alarm on the phone that works while the phone is off (meaning an alarm running on the RTC of the phone), or actual physical alarm clocks? Because the latter still exist.
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.
Pretty sure phone cases with external batteries exist that are literally identical to what you are describing (“purchase physically larger or higher capacity batteries”). Also current phones do a lot more than the old phones you’re describing as “having insane battery life.” Sure, a cell phone of 2005 could be left on for probably two days straight without needing a charge but you were only getting an occasional text message and maybe calling someone once or twice and maybe playing Snake during that timeframe.
External batteries are not the same as there is substantial loss in transmitting the power to the phone, particularly with the many “magsafe” compatible wireless ones. The wired ones add substantially more bulk for similar battery size and although the standard for battery life is much better now, for many otherwise great phones it’s still not amazing (aka every pixel prior to this year’s).
Being able to quickly swap a battery or simply replace it with a 10000mAh cell for only a few mm more thickness (my preferred method) simply isn’t an option now.
I miss the home phisical button and back/menu touch ‘button’ on tablet and phones. Having to swipe down from the top, then press the right symbol at the bottom before they disappear again is a mess.
Definitely try the “swipe” navigation. I had no idea the other (old?) navigation scheme existed as it has probably been a decade now. I vaguely remember one of my old phones introducing it, and that was the end of the buttons on the bottom. Did the non-stock versions of Android not do that?
I still miss buttons, but with how tall/wide the screens are, the question is where do you put them. I really need to try and get a smaller phone once this one dies…
I miss tether points. We have these super expensive, slippery devices and we have to stick something like a pop socket onto them to be able to get a good grip on them. I used to have these little dangly thumb loops that if I dropped my phone, it would just dangle there instead of slamming into the ground. It’s very minor, but I don’t understand why they don’t have them anymore.
Oh damn I want one now. I’ve gone caseless since my last case disintegrated and I really prefer it this way now. But a tether would be a welcome addition.
That just triggered a memory of my old dumb phone and its little dangly “hello kitty in samurai armor riding a tiger” charm. I don’t really care that current mobile devices don’t have those tie off points because as others have stated you can get cases that include them but thanks for reminding me of that old bauble.
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
It was MST, I know some Samsung phones had them, and it was used at credit card checkouts for stores that don’t have the nft/tap to pay. As far as I know it literally spoofed the magnetic field your credit card makes, so the credit card reader would think you swiped it. Super handy at stores that aren’t caught up with the tech when you didn’t have your wallet lol
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.
Some phones still have em, most Xiaomi phones do but then you gotta put up with their software or be comfortable flashing a custom ROM.
I love having an IR blaster in my phone mostly cause my work doesn’t trust us with air conditioning remotes but also I never have to stress about finding the right remote for everything since I’ve got anything I might interact with daily that uses an IR remote programmed into my phone.
THROUGH THE ACTUAL CARD READER SO THEY DIDN’T NEED GOOGLE/APPLE/SAMSUNG WALLET WHATEVER THE FUCK
That’s not an issue, I’m assuming you mean the establishment didn’t need it, but just to cover my bases I’ll give you both scenarios:
either you’re talking about your phone needing an app, which was still the case for the magnetic card thing, but I doubt you were talking about this.
or more likely, you are talking about the place you’re paying needing a new PoS for receiving NFC based payment. In this case the issue is from the retailers trying to get another cut of the money by making you go through their app, when they can receive that payment via tap to pay which is also a thing on new cards, I have used them both in my country without any issue because we don’t have those ass backwards retailers, there’s an issue of the person taking payment being unaware and trying to enable another mobile based payment method instead of just setting it to card based payment.
I’m talking about MST, which was actual hardware on the phone used in conjunction with software to fool card readers into thinking you swiped the actual card, even if they didn’t support nft. It was super handy and easy for the shops that haven’t upgraded yet.
I know, but that’s not really an app issue, that would be equivalent to complaining about cards without magnetic strip which only rely on NFC. It’s a result of new technology and not some bad idea trying to do things in a different way. It’s like complaining about touch screen tech because you can’t do things the exact way you used to on flip phones.
That’s like saying it’s ok that they removed the headphone jack because Bluetooth is newer technology? And I know it’s not an app issue, I was complaining about a hardware removal? I’m so confused after this comment lol
The magnetic thing was only ever a Samsung thing and it wasn’t as secure as NFC, NFC works basically the same as the thing you’re talking about, its only flaw would be that it doesn’t work with the old style card readers.
I never claimed otherwise? OP asked what a nifty feature on old gadgets was that’s not on newer gadgets, and I said that. That’s an old feature that’s not on newer gadgets, and it was very handy at the time because very few stores had adopted tap to pay. Would it be AS handy today? Certainly not, but there have still been times I’ve missed it when a store doesn’t have tap to pay.
Yes it’s outdated. Isn’t that the whole point of everything in this thread??? I just keep getting more confused lol
Edit: to clarify, the phone I had had BOTH MST and NFC. NFC had actually already been around and MST was the new thing at the time. It was simply a cool additional feature.
I suspect that the magnetic feature you desire is pretty unique to the usa. Anywhere else I’ve been in the world was chip or tap. Swiping the card would throw an error to use the chip only. So that country is just really far behind.
I was so frustrated when we switched to chip cards in the US, but did chip and signature, instead of chip and PIN like the rest of the world. WHY WHY WHY!?
The US was actually one of the first places the feature was removed, because (according to Samsung) there’s not really a need for it anymore since so many places adopted tap to pay so early. So we are actually just too far ahead in that regard for my taste lol. It’s also probably good to note that I haven’t seen this feature since the S20. (Also I definitely think Samsung exaggerated that and it was just cheaper to get rid of).
Still a very handy feature that I miss, there’s ALWAYS places you go that are still behind tech-wise XD
100% of this. It’s not just that I don’t need the screen space, it’s that my hands are not capable of holding my s22 without touching the screen because they had the fucking stupid idea to wrap the screen around the sides. I’m convinced the engineers at samsung are running an experiment to see how fucking stupid their phones can get without losing sales.
My current phone has all the things you listed except MST (never heard of that before though), and I bought it specifically for those reasons. Made by Xiaomi who still seems to want to give users features for some reason. Unlocked, rooted, custom rom, the whole shebang, I’m very happy with it.
It does still have a small front camera hole and a big back camera bump, but I don’t mind those personally. Though I do wish the camera bump wasn’t off centre. And like someone mentioned, I do wish it had an indicator led somewhere.
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?
Honestly this irks me to no end. We now have thousand dollar phones with all the speed, Ai capabilities, design, cameras, speakers, etc. Everything you could’ve wanted at its best in terms of performance, picture and camera quality, AI features… Except now you’re missing headphone jacks, replaceable batteries, Ir blasters, SD cards, extra Sim slots… Like, really, a thousand dollars for a phone and it has less features than a 200 dollar phone? Less features than phones from 6 years ago? Why the fuck have we sacrificed so much?? We had the chance to have a long golden era of long lasting, everything capable phones, but instead we’re stuck with boring bricks that do less than before, last less due to batteries wearing out, and come bloated with shit that you don’t need and can’t remove.
We seriously need some phone company out there to spec the fuck out of a high end phone with all these features, AND which meets GrapheneOS requirements and lets us flash the phone with whatever the fuck we want. We’ve gone completely backwards on phones, and it’s becoming more and more pointless to upgrade, you’re just changing phones for the batteries these days.
Well I haven’t owned one since college, but I was a cell phone salesman, so I loved it too. And I’m glad I already knew about that and used a comma as punctuation after “lol,” but thanks for the info I guess? Fair warning, this is the Internet, and you might run into more people like me :o
While the LED notification light was awesome, it is something that I don’t really need. I also don’t need a removal battery because my battery life has been extremely good and I’ll replace my phone before the battery goes bad. I don’t need wireless charging. My phone had that years ago but it’s kind of a gimmick, especially when a phone can charge up in about an hour and a half from dead. I don’t need a 3.5 mm headphone jack because I don’t use wired headphones, I have Bluetooth headphones but they rarely get used.
I’m glad that you’re the only person who buys the entire global supply of phones then.
It’s not like some people might be harder on phone batteries and need to replace them sooner, or enjoys just setting their phone down to charge it, or has expensive non-BT headphones they want to use because BT compresses the audio and BT mics are absolutely horrible compared to even dollar store earbuds.
But, as we established, those people don’t exist because you are literally the only person on this planet that uses a smartphone, so the entire global market can cater to your use cases and no one else’s, and it’s great they have gotten rid of all those features just for you.
I never recall saying that my use case was everybody’s use case. I was just stating that sometimes things like this are fine for some people like myself. People like me are in the minority yet you made the assumption I was speaking for everyone. Options are always better. I wish the modular phone came to be.
I wish there were smart phones with those little slide out keyboards like on some older phones, like a blackberry keyboard but slide out so it’s hidden unless you are actively wanting use it. And forward, back, play buttons for music and podcasts without having to eff around with the screen and unlocking and stuff.
If you are looking for something to set up at home then you can buy one of those hockey puck looking things. They connect to Wi-Fi and you can teach them a set of IR commands that they can repeat.
I love the Sony phones. If they sold the Xperia 5 V in my market (or even if the global version was compatible with my carrier’s G5 bands . . . ) I would probably buy it in a second. They seem to be deliberately betting on only releasing the 1 V in some wealthier markets though (likely because the 5 V would undercut demand) – but I refuse to spend 1 V prices with only a couple years of guaranteed updates.
Sony phones though are by far my favourite on the market these days, and it’s a shame that they aren’t more popular (or have enough developer interest to have LineageOS support).
Add comment