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.
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.
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.
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.
That was one of my favorite features of the Nexus one. Didn’t really need the track ball but being able to customize the color of notification light (I forget if that needed root or not) based on app was great. I’m guessing it must have been persistent blinking otherwise my current edge lighting notification would scratch the same itch, couldn’t be just nostalgia on my part…
FM receiver on phones + 3.5mn jack was a crucial source of local radio transmissions. I suspect some phones still ship radio receivers but the popular types like Samsungs and iPhones don’t seem to care (or perhaps that competes with their music and podcast markets).
Here in Italy since 2020 it’s not legal to sell a device that has an FM receiver if that device doesn’t also have a DAB/DAB+ receiver, so many companies have been shipping software updates that disabled the FM receiver app even if they were compliant on older phones. Kinda sucks.
That sucks! As long as a device can decode the signals, I don’t see why they should phase it out just to be compatible with DAB+ (especially when infrastructural costs are not a major factor).
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.
IR blaster. I could control just about anything in my house with my old Galaxy S6. Made it so convenient to have a universal remote built into the phone. Especially when you end up in a hotel or at a friend’s house and can’t find a remote.
Oh, my HTC One M8 had that. Really miss it for the IR Blaster and the air pressure sensor. You always had a really good weather station in your pocket.
I used to love having one of these while I was in college. I would use it whenever I went into the cafeteria for lunch and they had Cartoon Network on on the TV and Teen Titans NO was on. Yes, I know what I did. It is the only appropriate title for that steaming pile of radioactive waste.
It was also fun to mess with other public TVs when they thought that nobody would have the ability to change the channel.
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
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…
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 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.
Sony seems to be the only company making high-end phones with the 3.5 headphone jack. Unfortunately, their firmware is kind of weird with them not activating 5G on certain regions.
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