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.
With OLED screens its kind of crazy that simulated notification lights aren’t a thing. You could have all the other pixels off except for a dot on the screen which would act as a notification light when the display was off.
Pixel phones and I believe Samsung phones just light up the OLED display to let you know that there is notification. An independent LED was only necessary because screens would have to light up the whole display to indicate notification,but now we have better screens so that isn’t necessary.
I have a Samsung and have it set to light up the screen but it’s not the same as that LED. I used to be able to set the LED color for messages from certain people. Ex: Blue was a friend, Red was mom. The LED would also stay that color until I read the message where as the current screen color only lights up for a few seconds (unless there is a setting I’m missing).
Ad-Hoc wireless networking. I miss it, was useful back in the day if you needed to share files with multiple people without a wireless router at a location. Most laptops don’t support this anymore. To be fair, I’ve only really wanted to use it maybe twice in the last 10 years.
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.
I had to use my Moto G5s Plus again for 2 weeks when my current phone (Poco X3 Pro) was broken. It made me realize how usable it could still be, it’s just that the battery is basically dead. Also the micro-USB connector is so worn it doesn’t work with some cables anymore, and it is soldered-on. Well, OK, there’s a few more problems. It only has 32GB of storage, screen gets burn-ins within 3 minutes now, the main camera’s focus is mostly non-functional (it just makes weird noise while shaking the view, but if you hit it just right it can be used), it’s very laggy, it keeps losing cell signal,…
OK, it does have a few more issues, but I could still use it if both the micro-USB and battery were fine. The bezels and navigation button/fingerprint scanner are a large enough positive. But I can’t do micro soldering. I don’t even have money for a soldering heat gun…
I’m still using my '18 Nokia 6.1 and '16 Samsung Tab S2 8". As phone I see no alternative apart from fairphone, haven’t found an alternative yet for the 8" tablet. (There are no 8" left it seems)
Main tablet is a Lineage running Samsung Tab S5e, no alternative found for that. No 10" (or slightly larger) tablet that has an alternative rom. (Or one I can start developing for with another device as base)
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…
It was a build-up of something or other (carbon?) on the microphone part of the caller’s handset. You could fix it by tapping the handset sharply on a hard surface. Source: I used to work in radio back in the 80s.
I liked the sd-card feature, too. But nowadays my android has 128 GB and I never got more data than 25% on it. Because I sync and remove everything to the cloud. Idk what I could put on a sd-card.
I download everything I consume, my podcasts, music, manga, and even some netflix and pocket articles, this + gachas becoming increasingly bigger now makes it so 128GB is not enough anymore when Genshin alone occupies 30% of that.
After system updates you effectively only have like 100GB of space for real.
Sony phones still have the SD card slot, also no notch, a headphone jack while still being water resistant and the RGB notification led, if you’re interested.
I think this is why AskReddit made their posts title only, with no pictures or texts. OP’s question was about gadgets, but then they included a picture of a smartphone and used the text to mention smartphones. It then brainwashed everyone else to misread the question.
Haha you’re right. I focused too much on the comments and had forgotten the title by the time I got this far. I had been convinced by them that phones were in fact the subject.
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