Easily notification light. People always say “oh, it’s totally obsolete with always on displays”. But with a notification light I could focus on other stuff and the blinking light got my attention better. With the AOD, I always catch myself glancing at my phone. Also, the light’s color clearly indicated which app caused the notification. I had White for calls, Green for Whatsapp, Yellow for the ebay app, Red for GMail and so on. “You can do all that with an OLED screen! It only lights up the pixels that-” Can you, though? All apps that I tried were utter garbage. Buggy performance, very battery hungry and very cumbersome to configure. I don’t know if custom firmwares actually have that feature in a usable state nowadays, as I cannot root my phone anymore without losing core functionalities like online banking.
Yeah, everything tends to go to shit with time. I miss my Galaxy S2.
Can’t believe I forgot all about this. It was the one thing I was sad to lose when I upgraded from my Nexus 5 to the Google Pixel. So simple but so useful.
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Can you, though
You can. The technology is good but like many things the implementations are often kinda shyte
Apparently nearly everything I look for in a phone. Others have said IR blaster, side squeeze, notification light, and pop-up front camera, all of which were amazing.
I’d add an unlocked bootloader (I bought it, it’s my phone to do what I want with), removable battery (hello instant charging), and a small form factor (so sick of needing two hands to do anything).
Good news on the battery front: the EU is mandating that smartphones have user-replaceable batteries by 2027. It’s not clear if “readily removable” will mean “hot-swappable,” but… hope springs eternal, I guess?
Even if it requires some screws to swap that’s still good for breathing extra life into old phones.
Not so much a gimmick, as much as something that seemingly went extinct that I miss: rear fingerprint sensors. I loved them on my Nexus/Pixels, and the in-screen one on my 6a is way less consistent and convenient.
Also it flashbangs me when I try to unlock my phone at night.
I’m still on a pixel 4a, and I am terribly disappointed to hear that those have gone away.
Pixel 2 XL here, the rear fingerprint scanner on this is the only fingerprint scanner on any of my devices that works flawlessly, every time. Why on earth would they remove this???
[waves arms in the air] INNOVATION!
😭
I had a side/power button fingerprint sensor on my S10e. The S22’s in-screen one is cool and all, but I really miss how my phone would be unlocked before it even came out of my pocket.
That pop up camera on the OnePlus 7 pro.
That thing was cool as fuck. My roommate got the phone and I was VERY jealous even though I had a OnePlus 8T at the time.
As a OnePlus 7 Pro owner, I absolutely love it. No front camera cutout was one of the reasons I bought it.
Idk if this is a gimmick but I love swiping on the rear fingerprint scanner to pull up/down the notifications and quick settings. I also got an app that lets me swipe left/right on the sensor to adjust the brightness.
Adjusting the brightness with the fingerprint scanner sounds super practical, how’s that app called?
It’s been gone for a while now, but I really liked the IR blaster to use as a secondary remote when you can’t find the remote because your toddler was playing with it. Dammit Susie!
I use an old remote without batteries for that purpose.
Me sitting here wondering how you control your TV with a remote that doesn’t have batteries…
Lol. I have two.
Does IR sensor count? I loved that on older phones so much.
Not a gimmick. It was great to control TVs, air conditioners, audio receivers, and even electronics projects using something like an arduino and an IR sensor. Such a shame that our smartphones have been stripped of so many features as companies have run out of good ideas to increase demand.
I feel like the implementation was a bit gimmicky. I first used an IR transceiver as a remote on a late-model palm and the interface was much better than most apps I found on Android.
I wonder if it would be possible to pack that functionality into a smart-watch
Front facing stereo speakers were nice.
I miss the HTC One family, such cool phones…
This. I got a Xperia 1 III for the speakers and headphone jack.
Fingerprint sensors
My phone has an in-display fingerprint sensor and I am never going back.
Mine has one too but I still miss when they were putting them on the back of phones
Was just an easier spot to me
Back of the phone was the best. I could pull my phone out of my pocket and unlock my phone in single motion and decent grip. Plus the swipe gestures for accessing the notifications bar…
Same. The back sensor on my pixel 4a was positioned perfectly for me and didn’t leave one big thumbprint smudge like the in-screen on my 6.
It was also much more responsive
Can’t say I love the feature but the front facing camera getting “integrated” into the screen isn’t nearly as annoying as I thought it would be.
Removable battery, micro SD, sim slot etc
Were those ever considered gimmicks?
They don’t seem to exist much anymore, so must be a gimmick, right? Useful and popular features surely wouldn’t get removed
I get your sarcasm. But I’d like to point out that the claim would be that it’s outdated tech, not gimmicky.
It’s still a lie, though.
In reality the manufacturers don’t have any new good ideas so they have to resort to cost cutting in order to increase profit. They’ll just slap a 13th camera lens on the back and tailor their marketing material to make people think they need more lenses over anything else.
IR blasters. They were nice as a little pocket universal remote.
The air gestures that Samsung put in the S5. It was a gimmick, but a useful one, since you could use it to control things without having to fiddle with the screen.
Also the screen-off gestures on the Oneplus 5. It was great for turning the torch on or opening apps without having to faff about as much with the screen.
I used to work in a call center that had some TVs placed sporadically throughout the call floor. It was up to the manager what they wanted to have play on the TV of their row. Some would play the generic company slideshow that showed random stats and quotes and corporate rah rah BS, but others were fine with normal TV like EPSN or whatever. My manager was the head of the department and said he was fine with us putting whatever we wanted on the TVs. Unfortunately, me and the people around me couldn’t see our row’s TV from our desk, but we could see the TV of the row next to us; however, that manager was a complete power-tripping asshole and only wanted the company slide-show.
I would always use the IR blaster on my phone to change the TV to ESPN when his back was turned and see how long it took him to notice. Whenever he did notice, he’d walk around super mad trying to figure out who did it but he never suspected me. Eventually he just gave up and just let the TVs stay on ESPN.
And that’s the story of how I used the IR blaster on my phone to slowly bully the asshole manager into being slightly less of an asshole.
To show how old I am, a phone without a physical keyboard.
Really loved this about the Palm Pre coupled with WebOS which I still dearly miss. I found it so much more functional than Android in ways that mattered to me.
Which is, like, every smartphone?
now
Apple’s 3D Touch on iPhone. Force Touch or whatever they called it. The ability to hard press to get something like a right-click. Wish they’d kept it. Used it every day for placing my cursor.
Probably the Quick View Window case on the LG G-series phones. The overview on notifications was great and allowed answering calls without opening the flap while protecting most of the screen. Also the reduced visible screen space did not blast you with light when checking time in the middle of the night.
