I went through my late teens as the initial smart phone boom was happening. I had a Motorola q that could get TV channels and had a keyboard. I had the enV that flipped open. And many androids/blackberries that I loved for their unique form factor and functionality.
I have never balked at spending money on a phone and for a long time i felt locked into generic flagship devices. With the debut of folding screens I feel like my appetite for unique devices rekindled. I think the power of android lies in its diversity of implementation.
So what features and functionalities would you choose over the next flagship release?
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An open bootloader and a removable battery.
There are some niche phones with a thermal camera, would love to see more of that. Thermal modules are getting smaller, cheaper and better all the time and the main producers like infiray or guide are offering modules that seem to be clearly targeted at the smartphone market.
I’m still discovering new uses for my thermal camera and I wish I could have it in my pocket all the time. The obvious uses are finding gaps in your house’s thermal insulation or finding devices that draw a lot of standby energy. But you can also use it to find studs in your walls, find things that have recently been used, like cars in a parking lot or chairs in an office.
Thermal cameras are also really handy for electronics repair and spotting invisible water leaks in ceilings.
HEADPHONE JACK.
GIVE ME THE GOD DAMN HEADPHONE JACK BACK
A microsd card slot and a headphone jack
Larger, swappable battery. Squeeze for assistant
+1 for the battery. I turned off squeeze for assistant when I had it, lol. It kept going off by accident.
Slide out physical keyboard, notification LEDs or some form of cool lights, a dedicated camera shutter button, and a scroll wheel / touch pad like what used to be on the blackberry or like the LG KE970 I really liked that.
I really miss notification LED’s though, always on display is good, but a little light is going to use far less battery and be immediately apparent from across the room by the colour what app the notification came from is.
edit : formatting
I’m so annoyed that my Moto G60 has a sign of life LED that can’t be used for notifications.
That sounds infuriating, I really miss these features, its not like there isn’t even space to put them in, screen real estate isn’t everything.
I know some phones had already did this, but I always liked the idea of support for using your phone as a TV remote. The phone has replaced so many pieces of hardware that it feels silly that TV remotes haven’t been replaced yet.
I also specifically wish Chrome supported extensions on mobile. Firefox does it. Why can’t the biggest browser do it?
I miss the innovation of early 2010s phones. Using the IR blaster to mess around with bar TVs was a ton of fun. Not to mention headphone jacks, SD card slots, and removable batteries.
I wish Firefox mobile supported desktop extensions. I know its doable with Nightly builds, but that’s a pain to set up.
Through wifi. They used to have IR blasters that work just like the real remote
I want a Galaxy Fold style phone, but the external screen is eInk. Have it set to always show the book I am reading. This will let me read in bite sized pieces.
That would be awesome, although it might make the camera experience worse since you usually use the camera folded. I saw a prototype for a phone a while back that had a regular screen on one side and e-ink on the other, I always thought that was cool.
I was looking into smaller form factor phones awhile back, and an interesting feature I noticed some of them had was a programmable button.
I don’t know that programmable buttons on phones are that niche, but it’s certainly not common either so far as I’m aware, so this super simple feature would be wicked imo. I’d also really like if more phones just stole Motorola’s gesture interactions (e.g. quick twist for camera, firm double-shake for flashlight, etc.).
Also, uh…Speaking of small form factor phones, I don’t know if that counts as a feature, but it’s one detail I’d like to see come back, or flip phones with separate screens (clunky, sure, but better than the screen eventually creasing imo).
- Removable battery
- Ambidextrous button placement
- Screws instead of glue where possible
- USB4 + desktop mode
Late to the thread but here’s my thoughts on everything I’d like in a phone. Having just a few of these would make a huge difference in how much I’d want the phone.
Hardware:
- Standard features like a 3.5mm jack and MicroSD slot.
- Multiple USB ports (especially on tablets)
- Thunderbolt port
- Here’s a simple idea: Instead of making a thin phone with a massive camera bump, you make a thick phone with the camera flush with the back, and use the extra space for a bigger battery?
- User-replacable battery
- Modules like the modo mods
- Battery passthrough when charging
- Upgradable SoC, RAM, internal storage???
Software (here lies my hopes and dreams that will never be manifested):
- Starting off simple, a feature that lets you manually limit how much you charge your battery.
- Manual over/underclocking controls for the CPU
- Separate WiFi/data toggles
- More control over how big or small icons and text is
- Easy root access with app makers not getting all “you sus” over the fact that your device is rooted
- No data harvesting (duh)
- Better file management (and removing scoped storage)
- Multiple logins to a phone (like what you can do with a desktop)
- One app, multiple accounts
- Just having the software take less system resources.
- Open sourcing hardware drivers
- Multiple floating windows like with a desktop OS
- More than 3 split screen options
- I’m sure there’s a lot more I can’t think of now
I miss having a notification LED. It used to be super common to have a “breathing” effect with a given color when an app had sent a notification.
So a Snapchat for example would show the breathing as yellow, etc. Super convenient to check for messages without going and grabbing the phone.
I’m on a Fold 4 now and I do love the novelty/oddity aspect of having a folding tablet.
But I would love to see the return of IR blasters on most phones and sliding phones for physical keyboards.
I miss the IR blaster. Being able to control my TV and other set-top boxes was amazing. Now that functionality has been replaced by each manufacturer having their own control app that needs an internet connection and all your information. Bring back the IR blaster!
What about an external, optical camera lens ? I would 100% pay for a phone that looks like a brick but that has an optical zoom
