Kinda surprised that no one has mentioned the FM tuner. For reasons I never really understood, a lot of companies continued to build the hardware into phones but then wall it off with firmware.
My first MP3 player had one, my TV had one, there were even watches and lots of other devices that had one. People still listen to radio, so why don’t they give us a tuner?
Are you sure the hardware is still there? I only ask because given the number of hackers out there, I’m surprised someone hasn’t come out with a patch or something to make it more ubiquitous.
It’s not strictly there as a separate feature. Modern radio chips in phones are universal programmable radios, they can catch and process any wavelengths if you install correct code into them and plug a correct antenna. The same radio chip processes your 5G, Bluetooth, WiFi and everything else.
What phones are missing are FM antennas and radio firmware with FM support. This FM support is a paid feature for phone makers, so they don’t add it.
i think I recall that the Bluetooth hardware is essentially an FM tuner. Just needed a wired headphone to use as an antenna. My Moto Stylus 2022 still has it.
Mostly because they needed a wired headset to act as the FM antenna since it needs a decent length to capture FM compared to the much higher UHF and GHz frequencies that the mobile network uses.
Mostly because they needed a wired headset to act as the FM antenna since it needs a decent length to capture FM compared to the much higher UHF and GHz frequencies that the mobile network uses.
My point is that any sort of radio would be immediately drowned out by the massive amounts of EM interference as soon as you tried to charge.
In fact, professional audio devices often have to take extra precautions to avoid their power cables from becoming accidental antennas; Anyone who used a cheap set of computer speakers back in the 2000’s and 2010’s will know the distinct buzzing pattern that preceded a text message or phone call. That’s because cheap speakers would use unshielded power sources, and simple circuitry which didn’t bother to isolate the amplifier from the power.
Less of a feature and more of a design, but I miss phones being small. The iPhone 4S was the perfect physical size IMO and that thing looks tiny compared to my fuckhuge S23U. The physical bloat of the past 5 Galaxys is why I’ve decided not to go with Samsung for my next mobile
Seconding this. I can appreciate a large screen but it has limits, if I can’t use my phone with one hand because my fingers can’t reach half the screen while palm holding it the design sucks. Sent from my unwieldy modern smart phone force using both hands.
I’m on an iPhone 13 Mini — probably the last Mini model ever.
I like the form factor, but you really do notice the smaller battery. Most days, I’m at 20% by bedtime. If I run anything even semi-intensive throughout the day, I need a pit stop. I miss not worrying about it.
Main reason I stopped buying Motorola was the ever increasing screen size. I have bad elbows and extended phone use causes pain. A few ounces really does make a difference. A sub-5-inch phone with decent specs would be awesome.
Yep. I’ve been looking for my next phone for when my pixel 5 eventually goes and looking at Asus as it’s the only current high end phone that’s not bigger that 5".
I do not want a 6"-7" display. I want a 4"-5" display I can easy get in and out of my pocket, and be able to hold and use with one hand. Even a 5" screen is to big for my thumb to reach about 1/4 of the screen without moving my hand.
If you have access to an iPhone 4S, then try to use it for as couple of minutes, and then see if you still consider that 3.5 inch screen perfect size.
If you want a tiny phone, then why use the biggest one available? It’s like saying I wish I could get a small economic car, and then drive a Humvee.
Apparently when it comes down to it, you don’t really want a tiny phone.
Because the biggest are often the top models and at the time that I bought this one, my job required a powerful mobile. The battery bypass feature, exclusive to the S23U, alone made it a non-choice.
You’re making a lot of assumptions in your comment about me, what my workload on a mobile is, and my own tastes.
Try to read it again, I make zero assumptions, apart from the 2 you have stated yourself. You want a phone the size of an iPhone 4s but use a S23 Ultra. I’m just pointing out that those two are contradictory.
If I were to make an assumption, it would be that it seems you want a flagship phone the size of an iPhone 4s. Which you kind of can with a foldable.
Battery bypass is not exclusive to the S23 Ultra, the entire S22 and S23 series have it:
Battery bypass is not exclusive to the S23U, it’s on other recent Samsungs and it wasn’t even first introduced on Samsung phones, it’s been on multiple Sony and Asus phones. So yeah, people are gonna make assumptions when you’re complaining about how big phones have gotten while owning one of the largest phones on the market.
If anything, this thread kind of shows how much people fail to get informed about their smartphone before they buy one.
Literally every single one of these features is available on the market. Most of those phones are actually the quality stuff, like the German produced Gigaset/Volla, or the Dutch (assembled?) Fairphone. But no, you have to go out of your way to get the bottom of the barrel Iphone and Samsung made in China.
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
And then they completely bork the file system with separate storage for every app. Nobody needs a dozen different folders for storing pictures, with no way to combine them.
IR blaster! Iiss that feature. When my wife was sick in the hospital they had a TV with 10 stupid channels. But I found that the TV had a USB post. So I used a flash drive and my phone as the remote to let her watch TV shows while she was stuck in bed.
IR blaster was the shit. Back then, there was an app called beep and go (I think) that held the barcodes for your loyalty cards. For someone that collected them like baseball cards, it was really handy.
Anyway, Samsung actually had the ability to transmit the barcode via the IR blaster which some scanners could read if they couldn’t read the barcode on the phone.
It was awesome!
I agree that the heart rate monitor was a bit of a gimmick though.
I used to have a similar problem - even if well reviewed, budget and midrange bluetooth earbuds would not last while budget-midrange wired earphones would last forever.
Think it’s just build quality for bluetooth buds. I got a set of Galaxy buds, 1st gen, roughly 3+ years and still running strong to this day. Was not cheap though.
All Most of the ones you can get nowadays actually have a sound chip inside the cable (in the flat part behind the USB-C). So they’re pretty much a USB-C soundcard with just a headphone out. So it’s worth shopping around to find one that has a good soundcard built in.
A good alternative is getting a decent portable Bluetooth audio receiver to plug your regular headphones into. Can get a better headphone amp that way.
There are phones that output analog audio over type C so you can have a type c to jack adapter with no dac inside, just wires. That is possible through Audio Adapter Accessory Alternate Mode.
My huawei tablet works with such an adapter, but when I try it with the samsung s10e which has a jack, it gives an error and doesn’t work.
Type C alternate modes are cool, too bad they are not advertised, they should be clearly labled and easily distinguishable. Type C has so many features yet it’s so hard to know what’s available without actually having the devices and connecting them. It’s both a blessing and a curse.
Thanks for the correction. I had thought that only some of the early Motorolas had that feature, but it looks like there are quite a few more phones that support analog audio out via USB-C.
And that why you’ll never get it back. You’re clinging to brand loyalty and hung up on arbitrary crap rather than just trying competing phones. Have you actually used any of those “suck” phones, or are you just going with the usual iPhone/high end android circlejerk?
As I mentioned in another comment, if you’d bothered to read it, I have particular needs that mean I can’t really replace my phone with something else right now. I have absolutely no loyalty to brands, and I’m not clinging to something arbitrary.
What I don’t understand is why the notification LED was removed in the first place? It can easily be put under the screen.
The LED was so helpful, and it’s so annoying when I don’t see an important message for hours, because I haven’t used my phone.
Yet there are often warnings that even with OLED AOD eats a lot of battery, not so with a notification LED.
The absolute newest OLED that can do 1Hz refresh are better. But that doesn’t change that the removal of the notification LED was detrimental to the functionality of the smartphone.
Someone else posted an app that gives the feature back. If you turn off other aid features and just use the app it won’t use more battery than a notification led.
it won’t use more battery than a notification led.
If the screen has 60hz or higher refresh, I’m pretty sure it will. The screen itself may not use much, but the DAC will still use power.
I haven’t seen this actually tested, but many claim the difference in battery life is noticeable. I don’t think it matters much what app you use, many phones come with an AOD app, and I seriously doubt a third party app is better.
If the screen has 60hz or higher refresh, I’m pretty sure it will.
It’s supposed to drop down to 1hz. The CPU refreshing a pixel of an OLED screen or a notification led is the same power usage. That is even if you have a notification led, the CPU could still be stuck refreshing it at 60 hz.
AH ok that makes a lot more sense. ;) As I understand it, it’s only the newest top displays that can go down to 1 Hz. Or maybe it’s just when in use they can’t for some reason. I find the 1Hz capability to be extremely cool, so it would be great if it’s a more general feature of AOD.
OLED AoD eats a lot of battery because there’s still quite a lot of information(and thus, pixels turned on) shown on the AoD. A single pixel blinking on and off would at most use the same power as a dedicated notification led.
I used to have a custom ROM that would allow me to change the color based on which app had the most recent notification: FB was Blue, SMS was Green. Let me be prepared ahead of time if it was going to be important or not.
Ironically I was grateful for a custom rom to turn off the light. It was useful but I hated it at night because at least on my phone it was stupidly bright
I used to have a custom ROM that would allow me to change the color based on which app had the most recent notification
Even more than that, in early versions of Android this setting was baked in. I had colors set based on text messages, emails, etc. I think around 2.x was when the option was removed.
I don’t know about the original, but I rocked a Droid 4 for the longest time. It’s probably my all time favorite phone. I really miss how quickly I could type and the extra screen space I got from not needing the software keyboard.
I’m guessing… they don’t want us deciding whether to engage with our phones, they want us looking at them more. If that means less convenience for us we can get fucked
I think you may have a point, It’s kind of weird how the first 10 years of smartphones, was an ever higher climb for better phones, driven by competition.
But now that everybody are dependent on the phones, they all agree on taking useful features away???
It’s probably also a litter safer with only system apis accessing system hardware. If you look at how the camera assembly is one piece and apps basically access the whole thing securely.
Oh, in some cases the notification LED is physically there, but is disabled in software. At least I know that was the case with a bunch of Motorola phones, including my Moto G5s Plus.
I have no effing clue. Maybe to get us to actually look at the damn phone more often? Because of the people who’re drowning in spam? Makes not THAT much sense. Probably to save a cent in circuit-design, because only the nerds were using the stupid LED? I really would like to know too.
It’s very much a mid-range device but so was the price. It was still an easy decision since it is literally the only modern smartphone in existence that matched my minimum requirements. I’m coming from LG V20 so I still had to let go of FM-radio, optical image stabilization, IR blaster and the hi-fi DAC.
Of course not by default, that’d be dumb. Every app that wants it pops up a Y/N-dialogue. That’s how I want it. It’s my phone, goddamit. I might’ve phrased that a bit misleading :-)
Some Windows devices do come like that! Windows Home S is a stupid fucking thing that I am sick to death of family members bringing to me.
It’s free to bring it out but you need a Windows account to download the package to remove the S from the device to make it your own.
There was also the RT version like the Surface RT. Which was actually worse because I don’t remember there ever being a way to remove the RT and go to full Windows….
My problem with the fingerprint reader in the display is that it just doesn’t work well. I’m on a pixel 7 pro, and more often than not it will try and fail a few times, then require a pin unlock. My pixel 5 with the fingerprint reader on the back was nearly flawless.
The one in my Galaxy S22 works great. There is a trick though to make it work even better: Register the same finger twice (and really get all angles). That usually makes the unlock much more reliable.
for what it’s worth, you can make your phone’s flashlight serve the same purpose as those old notification lights. more harsh and no colors, but it’ll get your attention
Not really, because to see that, you have to put your phone with the screen down on the table. That both ruin the quiet mode function, and increases risk of wear of the screen glass from hard surfaces.
Everything apple and Samsung helped remove from phones to squeeze mode pennies out of their customers. Headphone jack, micro SD card slot, ir blaster… etc
IR blaster for smartphones. I still have one on mine and I can use it for tons of stuff, not just as a TV remote.
I even worked for a company who made lots of IR based products (taps/faucets, accessibility stuff) and it was amazing how many people had to buy the dedicated remotes for these products for extra money.
When I asked them if their phone has an IR blaster, so they could just download a free app and use it instead. “I have an iPhone” was the most common answer.
I don’t know about the ID and drivers license, but banking is no problem as you do not root the phones anymore. You can even use the google wallet if you want. I think the only thing not there is the google safetyNez verification, even tho you can install apps through the playstore. So I don’t know if the apps can determine if there on an official build or not.
Edit: Please take my words carefully as I’m only in the experimentation phase myself. All I really can say is: my banking app and PayPal work no problem
I agree the software is bad. All my phones bought after nexus 4 was made by Xiaomi. They give option to unlock bootloader and flash custom rom.
Not all the phones get official lineage os support, but almost all snapdragon versions get custom rom support.
I gave my Redmi Note 4 to my mom, which is 6 years old and running latest OS with recent security patches. None of the other OEMs were supported upto this period (just give exception to Samsung Galaxy 2).
I do have a Xiaomi phone and as I mentioned I am actively using the IR blaster, but the majority of regular users will not even think about checking the specs when buying new tech.
They will just go for the latest iPhone or the current trending android bestseller.
One big technical reason for this was actually the file system. Back when phones came with various types of sd-card support, they only had a few gigs of storage. fat32 was enough and was supported everywhere. But fat32 had some file system limitations and when sd-card sizes grew over 4gb there were comparability issues since windows was limited to fat32 and ntfs. I can imagine the support hell when a user couldn’t mount the sd card containing photos on his or her computer.
The solution to that was ExFAT, which is another patented MS system, so requires a license fee (I think) but otherwise is compatible with anything (because they all had to pay the fee…) But specifically compatible with Windows out of the box.
I loved the old Windows CE phones. You got a dpad, buttons on the front, and side buttons. All frequently used apps were instant at the button press. No nonsense of turning on phone, unlock, look carefully before clicking app on touch screen because you can’t physically feel the button.
Full qwerty keyboard. I know I am a minority. I don’t need more screen estate, I need to be able to make notes in my diary whithout looking on the screen and not bumping into things while I am walking. I’ve tried the Uniherz offers, but the OS and the quality is really sub-par. I’ve jumped on the Astroslide train, but the manufacturing batches went south over the Covid and I don’t blame the Astro guys for not getting my device. Some US company did buy the BlackBerry licence and I was ready to pay any price for their phone - but they failed to manufacture anything. If only you could jailbreak BlackBerry Key 2 - I’d be carrying it proudly around till today. (written on Google Pixel 6 runnning Graphene with a collabsible pocket bluetooth keyboard - so I can type at least while I am not moving - best among terrible options).
For me it’s this (the color coded notification LED on phones) and while on the topic of phones I used to have a xiaomi phone several years ago that had an infrared face unlock feature so you could use face unlock in complete darkness. Haven’t had a phone with that before or after. It was awesome.
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