Oh yes the notification light was incredible. I had one on my Pixel 2 XL. I just switched phones like a week ago to a Nord N200 and it doesn’t have one. Not too big of a deal though.
I wish phones still had IR blasters but those are long gone. It would be awesome to control my Edifier speakers with my phone as a remote control.
Edit: Also how about a good camera? All mid range and low end phones today have like 3 or 4 mediocre cameras because it looks fancier then having 1 nice camera.
still using my four year old redmi note 8 and yeah, the ir thing works well. I like xiaomi phones because they are so customizable, you can install custom OS and root it quite easily.
All midrange and low end phones today have like 3 or 4 mediocre cameras because it looks fancier than having 1
The pixel a series does that right, also i would prefer two, 1inch sensors with 26mm and 50mm focal lengths, i rarely use telephoto or ultrawides (purely because Of the bad quality)but it seems like I am in a minority
So much this. I’d love Blackberry Passport but with modern Android. I don’t mind it being wide, I just need a good keyboard which I use far more than designers think.
How hard is it to get into the phone game in terms of regulatory stuff? Like if I had the device designed and manufacturing ready to go, what legal hoops would I have to jump through to become a phone maker?
Is it a closed space? Can I enter it? Do I need to register with FTC or get other huge corps to cooperate with me or anything?
Asus Zenphone? I’m not sure if it’s absolutely top notch specs but every review I’ve ever seen for it loves it. And it’s tiny. I love my phones as big as possible so I’ve never tried it but I’ve always wanted a bigger version of it so that I could.
Software support is quite a downside though. Asus is not great at supporting their Zenphones in comparison to other manufacturers. You only get around 2 years of OS updates (and 4 years of security updates? I guess it differs for each phone a little) The hardware looks great, but this was the reason to not buy it for me as I usually use phone for 4-5 years.
I went with the Pixel 8 Pro, I do really love the extra camera features, but the phone is just so big. I was using a regular Pixel 8 the other day and it was so comfy.
Of course it depends on body size and style of trousers you prefer. If you rock Cargo pants you will have no issues for sure :D Ask a female friend for example, i guess lot of them cannot fit a modern phone into there pockets
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).
I miss phone bodies being plastic. Sure, metal feels premium but you can’t drop your phone without leaving a permanent mark on it. Not to mention how stupid the idea of having glass background is. These days it’s hard to see a phone whose glass is not messed up.
To be honest, peak design for me was Samsung’s Galaxy S2. I loved that device. Thin, very light, perfect size for my hands. I’d kill for something like that but upgraded to modern standards. I’d also love to see devices with physical keyboard. I waited for BB Key3 to come out when they decided to discontinue the line. Ended up with yet another Samsung device.
I’ve ran into Uniherz, among others, when I was looking for a new device with keyboard. Titan is a nice concept, but it’s too big and bulky. Titan Slim wasn’t available at the time, but it seems like a more reasonable device for my use case. However I do worry about lack of software updates and third party support. If either was available, then I wouldn’t have an issue. But this way am on a mercy of their software development team to give me patches in timely manner.
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.
Try Kustom Widget (KWGT). It’s a scripted mini app maker that exposes a lot of the phone internals, and it keeps expanding. The developer is really responsive to feature requests. I use it with my home weather station and a pi-based sensor network to monitor home security. When I get my solar installed, I’ll add in the status of that system. The major limitation is that KWGT is event driven, with a minimum update interval of once a second. This interval has a major impact on battery life, so the default is one minute.
While I’m downright chuckling at the desire to go back to rotary phones, I gotta appreciate that there’s always someone who liked things better the old way.
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.
Smartphones are already insanely energy efficient. But instead of tuning them for longer battery life, companies kept pushing for faster processing, higher resolutions and refresh rates in the last few years. Now there’s diminishing returns (imo 4k on a 6" device is just absurd) so I expect future devices to double down on energy efficiency. But then maybe companies just end up decreasing the battery’s capacity for lower weight…
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).
Late nineties ,early aughts… Did you used to mod Nokia bricks and early Motorola flip phones? (Razr iirc) Used to get blinking LEDs, replace the antennas with them, clear batteries that had flashing lights. Pretty much the OG RGB
They were replaced by “always on” OLED displays. When I turn my phone off, the screen still displays the time and notifications. The beauty of OLED is that each pixel is its own LED, so only a portion of the screen needs to be powered. Essentially, the whole display is the new notification light.
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