I loved the notification light, I had mine programmed to have different colors correspond to different types of notifications and it would buzz at me in response to being picked up as well if I’d missed a call or text.
I got an app called Always On Edge where you can do literally just that and you can also choose for the entire edge to flash or glow or keep the old virtual dot, change the colors and interactions based on which app it was, and more.
I use AODnotify to effectively do the same thing. It animates a ring around either the display (when the screen is “off”), or the camera cutout when it’s on.
My current Xiaomi phone has an IR blaster, but what I miss is having an IR receiver as well, trying 100 random remotes to find which one works with your obscure TV/AC is such a pain when you used to be able to just clone one instead.
Lemmy, or indeed the entire Fediverse, is middle aged nerds. Older non-nerds are on Facebook and Twitter. Older nerds are on IRC and Newsgroups, middle aged non-nerds are on Reddit, middle-aged nerds are on Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon, younger non-nerds are on Tiktok and Instagram. There are no young nerds (see the growing epidemic of Gen-Z being baffled by Technology futurism.com/gen-z-baffled-basic-technology).
Social Media is like a school dance in the 90s. Islands of people will emerge with similar age and interests, and they just stay there, because that’s where their people are.
The first example in that article is an office photocopier. I’m a middle aged nerd and I am regularly baffled by those things. Paper orientation is the least of the problems with those psychotically uninitiative beasts and their cruel and unusual menu systems.
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.
Good keyboards on computers. At the office, everything are those extremely uncomfortable $5 dell keyboards. At a climbing gym or pool, the liability iPads that you sign forms on is using those really uncomfortable apple keyboards too.
I miss the better keyboards that we had back 25 years ago. Modern box jades bring some of that back for your own PC.
Excuse me, the IBM model M was made from 85-96, there was then a 10 year gap until the Das Mechanical came out in 06 but the Model M was 100% widely available used during that time and Cherry AG stayed in business so there were still modders and small companies making Model M type keyboards even then.
But… you could just buy a good keyboard? With a bit larger budget than that 5$ a lot of modern mechanical keyboards could just as well be pure gold, they are so good. I’m still chugging on my 65$ CM Storm Quickfire XT from 8-10 years ago. This is problem of knowledge/motivation , not a problem of supply/scarcity
You can get nice mechanical keyboards these days. They’re not cheap though
Back in 2004 the company we worked at (we worked for another company who provided tech contract work for them) was bought and they were dismantling a particular site. I remember getting to the e-trash dumpster and finding boxes of almost new computers and HP keyboards. I had a truck so I grabbed them all. The computers, I donated. The keyboards I still have maybe 3 or 4, after having given others to friends and family.
I don’t really miss 3.5mm, neither do I miss SD card slots. I don’t even miss replaceable batteries and all that stuff. But I do sincerely miss good devices with physical keyboards. Damn I wish Blackberry came back for a good flagship.
Physical buttons in cars for radio and environment settings.
There used to be a time when I could have my hand on the gear shifter and just reach out with my fingers to change radio stations or adjust the heat or a/c without needing to look down at all.
Now with modern touchscreens in cars, you can’t do any of that. I have gotten used to playing with the radio via the steering wheel buttons, but anything else requires hunting around, looking for the correct spot to touch the screen.
And yet they say, “don’t take your eyes off the road!”
Yeah you can preview this cycle by looking at Cadillac. They were among the first to go touch-only with Cue in the early 2010s, started fading back in physical buttons with new models in the late 2010s, and on their newest models now have a full set of very nice custom buttons not shared from the GM parts bin.
Physical buttons do everything better and are safer for drivers since they require less attention to be taken off the road.
I will continue to refuse to buy any car that has internet connectivity or touchscreens. They’re unsafe and unnecessary, only allowing for more tracking of our personal lives
Im with you on the always online automobiles and the importance of tactile feedback for important and commonly used buttons, but a small screen for a back-up camera is very nice.
Im not against screens entirely, just ones that are touchscreen and hide critical buttons behind menus.
A screen that does nothing more than GPS, Music and Backup cameras is pretty much the extent of what I’d need, and there’s a bunch of 3rd party accessories that do that.
Some car companies are going back to physical buttons. A screen for everything is still my most hated thing about modern vehicles. I wanna look like I’m operating the millennium falcon or a Gundam when I’m driving, gimme back muscle memory.
My 2021 VW GLI is mostly buttons. There’s a big touchscreen for the infotainment, except volume. There’s a “tuner” knob but it doesn’t really so anything (I don’t listen to am/fm radio). HVAC controls are all buttons and knobs. Steering wheel controls are also buttons and switches.
My CX5 is similar, buttons for all things not entertainment. There’s only one out of place design on the car that irks me - it doesn’t have a setting to change whether the mirrors fold or not. Why is this useful? I’m in the Midwest and in the winter they can get stuck overnight due to ice. So they have a convoluted process (without an audible or visual confirmation mind you) to disable or enable. Ignition on, lock the windows. Press all three passenger window buttons on the driver’s door down for 3 seconds. This would have been so much nicer to be in a menu off of the entertainment system, similar to say the lighting timing upon exit etc.
I just got a 2018 Honda Odyssey and it’s great. It has the touch screen, but also has physical buttons for almost all of the climate and radio stuff. That’s how it should be IMO. Just give us both!
You’re lucky (or smart) to go with the 2018, my gfs 2016 Honda Accord does have physical buttons for the climate, but for some reason has a weird touch pad thing instead of a volume knob. It drives us both up the wall. The car is near perfect besides that but that one issue is enough to convince me to never buy a Honda of that generation.
Our 2021 Hyundai Kona has physical buttons for most things, and some advanced functions are accessible through the touchscreen. Maybe it’s an exception
I’m a school bus driver and some modern buses have the switches for operating the doors and the 8-ways (the amber and red flashers at the top corners) on the steering wheel and they drive me up the fucking wall. The problem is that you often have to stop for kids after making a sharp turn one way or the other, so the wheel is not in its normal position and you have no idea where the switches are and have to look down to see them. If they’re on the left fixed panel (their “normal” location) you can reach for them without having to look.
That’s just terrible design, the only buttons that should be on the steering wheel are ones you are likely to use while at speed and there should always be backups on the dash. It’s more expensive to run wires to the wheel and they’re more likely to break.
Can second the replaceable batteries and extendable storage.
However I don’t mind the lack of a headphone jack, because they make affordable dongle dacs now. I think instead of a headphone jack phones should just have 2 usb c ports
Dacs are great, I have one for my IEMs and love it. But only when im sitting. As soon as any movement happens I am occasionally punished when the cable moves 1mm out of its port with noise or complete sound stoppage. I can use my TWS but sound quality and reliability suffers.
Replacement batteries should be a legal requirement. My 5 year old android phone needed a new battery and people kept telling me to get a new one as the phone is old anyway. It still does what I need so why should I get a new one just because of a battery.
I ended up taking the phone apart myself and replacing it. Wasn’t easy and took me over 2 hours.
I’m up for anything which keeps phones working for longer. Such a waste of money and resources for what should be a simple job.
To be fair, expandable storage as we’ve had it sucks. MicroSD cards cause a lot of issues, and a good chunk of Android apps block the ability to use them. Connecting an SSD to your phone is a much better experience.
Connecting a piece of hardware via a cable, to a small mobile handheld device, is a better experience? Talk about hardware issues. Jostling cables around, looking for a way to charge the phone while its charging port is blocked… SD cards might have been a little slow, but they were at least internal.
We also lost the ability to encrypt them. There’s basically no external drives that let you encrypt data on the fly.
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.
My wife had a super cool phone that would slide up to reveal a full keyboard. Really slick. Her favorite phone to this day, her Nexus 5 was a close second.
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