For me it’s the notification light you used to find on older phones, was particularly good to know if your phone was charged without picking it up
Physical buttons in cars
Repairable phones
Repairable laptops
Resoleable shoes
Hand-crank drills (for those quick and easy projects where dealing with batteries or cords isn’t worth it)
External frames on hiking packs
Actually tough jeans that need to be broken in and last a while
Headphone jack
I miss physical buttons on everything. We’re a tactile species living in a digital purgatory
I switched to the 2022 iPhone SE for this last year only for the EU to pull the usb-c thing toward apple (who of course requires the Apple certified cables now anyways so it solved nothing). and after that happened I know the writing is on the wall for this phone one day because of its design. I’m going to be using it until the very bitter end when not a single app is supported anymore. I will be a physical button warrior to the end.
That single button is hardly worth holding out for. If you switch, I think you’d find it’s no worse, just exactly as shitty.
I agree with all but hand crank drills. If you own a battery drill it’s probably stored with it’s battery and with keyless chucks (that don’t work on a hand crank drill) getting a battery drill ready for work is faster than a hand crank, and it will do the job faster too.
also it looks cool when you change the battery like a gun
Agreed and that was also my one exception to that comment.
If someone’s really worried about having a super compact kit for smaller, light duty jobs, the 12v (and under) options from any major tool manufacturer will fit the bill nicely.
I’m guessing we’re a similar age because those are all on my list too, along with cars that come with full size spares and a jack.
Resoleable shoes are alive and well, just not in the mainstream brands. Rose anvil youtube has a lot of good shoes reviewed.
You can still readily get crank hand drills, I have a (vaguely) modern one that I use for situations where I want the control/tactile feedback and/or have restricted access or the like. It covers a different set of problems than the standard cordless.
Mine is Fiskars branded and a little plasticky (and not the version they sell currently). I like it enough that I’ll get a nicer one if I kill it.
Nice! I inherited mine from my grandfather and I hope to pass it on myself someday.
There are some products that buck the trend for a couple of your points:
Repairable phones - https://www.fairphone.com/
Repairable laptops - https://frame.work/
I have a framework 13 and absolutely love it. Not used a Fairphone yet, and I believe the latest model might have sadly scrapped the 3.5 headphone jack, but will still be a strong contender when I next need an upgrade.
I’ve been eyeing the Framework for my next laptop, definitely looks interesting!
Physical buttons
in carsMy induction hob, my extractor fan, a light above the countertop… All of these things just in my kitchen don’t have physical buttons and I hate it. Physical buttons are so easy to use and in so many ways superior to these “touch” buttons.
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Dayyyyym Chuch!
Privacy.
Try to let go of Google everything. Start by ditching Chrome and Chromium based browsers
I switched to duck duck go who knows how many years ago. Haven’t looked back.
Can’t even remember when I started using Firefox, but that was probably around the time when Opera became popular. Before Crome existed, I was already on FF and never regretted staying there. At that point, I was already somewhat aware of privacy matters, so switching to Chrome seemed completely stupid to me.
Same, but I find for about 1% of sites I have to load them in chromium. Just works much better
It was the same thing with IE back in ancient times. A popular browser violates web standards so many sites were designed with that rogue browser in mind. If you use a browser that actually follows the standards, some sites just won’t work properly for you.
Have you tried not shitting with the door open?
That’s funny. Every time somebody says “If you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about,” I reply, “Do you shit with the door open?”
But now the door isn’t just open. It feels like Uncle Sam is pissing between your legs.
Absolutely the damn LED. I would love to trade the stupid never-being-used selfie-cam for a damn 5 cent LED.
And swappable batteries. And a headphone-jack. And root by default (imagine you winpc came with no admin-pwd. Lol)… And…
I used to love customising the notification colour on my old phones, so good.
I miss my headphone jack so damn much, I’m over Bluetooth earbuds breaking constantly and being so damn expensive and low quality.
Then buy phones with headphone jacks. Mine has one, I dont buy ones without it.
If it matters for you to have it, dont buy phones that cut it. If models with it keep selling, theyre less likely to ditch it.
I’d rather just buy a DAP than randomly replace a perfectly good phone with one that sucks in comparison.
And that why you’ll never get it back. You’re clinging to brand loyalty and hung up on arbitrary crap rather than just trying competing phones. Have you actually used any of those “suck” phones, or are you just going with the usual iPhone/high end android circlejerk?
You have assumed completely wrong, friend.
As I mentioned in another comment, if you’d bothered to read it, I have particular needs that mean I can’t really replace my phone with something else right now. I have absolutely no loyalty to brands, and I’m not clinging to something arbitrary.
Lol I only buy jack phones, and if you think they suck you need to shop in places that arent back alleyways
It was a perfectly good MacDonald’s, thank you very much!
But in all seriousness, I just have particular needs that literally can’t be met by anything else.
U could try a usb to jack converter. Looks stupid but at least there’s a jack. Quality sucks anyway as they all use cheap dacs now 😩
usb to jack converter
AllMost of the ones you can get nowadays actually have a sound chip inside the cable (in the flat part behind the USB-C). So they’re pretty much a USB-C soundcard with just a headphone out. So it’s worth shopping around to find one that has a good soundcard built in.A good alternative is getting a decent portable Bluetooth audio receiver to plug your regular headphones into. Can get a better headphone amp that way.
There are phones that output analog audio over type C so you can have a type c to jack adapter with no dac inside, just wires. That is possible through Audio Adapter Accessory Alternate Mode.
My huawei tablet works with such an adapter, but when I try it with the samsung s10e which has a jack, it gives an error and doesn’t work.
Type C alternate modes are cool, too bad they are not advertised, they should be clearly labled and easily distinguishable. Type C has so many features yet it’s so hard to know what’s available without actually having the devices and connecting them. It’s both a blessing and a curse.
Thanks for the correction. I had thought that only some of the early Motorolas had that feature, but it looks like there are quite a few more phones that support analog audio out via USB-C.
From the wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#Alternate_modes
Moto Z/Z Force, Moto Z2/Z2 Force/Z2 Play, Moto Z3/Z3 Play
Sony Xperia XZ2
Huawei Mate 10 Pro, Huawei P20/P20 Pro, Honor Magic2, LeEco
Xiaomi phones
OnePlus 6T, OnePlus 7/7 Pro/7T/7T Pro
Oppo Find X/Oppo R17/R17 Pro
ZTE Nubia Z17/Z18
I’ve got a suprisingly good pair of USB C earbuds that I found in my mailbox at the moment, but yeah at some point I’ll probably get a DAC
Root by default is an awful idea.
Of course not by default, that’d be dumb. Every app that wants it pops up a Y/N-dialogue. That’s how I want it. It’s my phone, goddamit. I might’ve phrased that a bit misleading :-)
What I don’t understand is why the notification LED was removed in the first place? It can easily be put under the screen.
The LED was so helpful, and it’s so annoying when I don’t see an important message for hours, because I haven’t used my phone.deleted by creator
Because if you can read an LED notification system you have no purpose to pick up the cellphone.
Cellphones are not designed FOR YOU. They are designed by marketeers for you to use.
Once you realize this, all the anti-consumer shit makes sense.
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I got all three on my XCover 6 Pro
But probably no easy root? That is imperative for me. I don’t buy gadget i wouldn’t own.
I have no idea honestly. It’s quite esoteric device so probably not.
Even I haven’t heard of it (yet). So most probably not. But still … :-)
I had an XCover 4 and hated the specs and the Samsung aspect. Too much bloat for my tastes.
I’m glad there are others still buying these phones though, and the “Pro” makes it sound like it has modern specs!
It’s very much a mid-range device but so was the price. It was still an easy decision since it is literally the only modern smartphone in existence that matched my minimum requirements. I’m coming from LG V20 so I still had to let go of FM-radio, optical image stabilization, IR blaster and the hi-fi DAC.
How’s the Samsung bloatware on it?
3.5mm headphone jack
There are often enterprise versions that still have it. Like the S10E for example.
Yes, and I’m thinking my next phone will be one of those.
I have a much better time with wired earbuds than with bluetooth.
Forgot my bluetooth headphones the other day on a long trip and the 3.5mm jack saved my rear end.
Just needed to stop at a shop briefly for some cheap plug-in buds and I was no longer listening to babies screaming on the journey. As a bonus, it also didn’t interfere with me charging my phone
I’d like bluetooth earbuds a lot more if I could find some that aren’t “smart.” If I put on a beanie, I bump them. If I remove one earbud to converse, I bump it. I’ve not once intentionally used a gesture-based control on an earbud for anything else other than undoing the situation I’ve caused by bumping them. Otherwise, I control everything with my phone. If I’m working out, I just select my playlist, mute notifications, and I don’t have to touch anything after that. Gesture-based earbuds are not for me.
I really don’t think there are dumb bluetooth earbuds, though. At least, I haven’t been able to find any.
I have the Samsung Galaxy Buds Plus and their app has an option to disable touches, so that’s what I do, because I’m the same as you. I bought them used and have been using them on a daily basis for at least three years and they’re still working well. Might be something to look into. I hope you find something that works for you!
I have a pair of cheap Skullcandy’s that have physical buttons instead of touch sensors. The buttons are basically impossible to use without smooshing the earbud into your ear trying to click it, but it also means it’s really hard to accidentally click them. Probably as close as you can get to dumb Bluetooth earbuds.
I don’t even understand why someone would want controls on their earbuds, much less for it to be such a widespread issue, but honestly I’m just going to make sure my next phone has a 3.5mm jack
Could always get one of the beanies that have bluetooth speakers in 'em. It’ll solve your problem of bumping your earbuds, (though not through a necessarily “good” option). Or, you could use the wired bluetooth headphones like these.
As another alternative, there’s the apple airpods, which, as far as I can tell, have not gestures but some weird-ass pseudo capacitive button that makes a sound when you press them. I did just realize though, that if you have an apple device they’ll automatically pause playback when you take a headphone out (I think), so that may not be your cup of tea. However, if you have an Android, this addition won’t work unless you have an app like CAPods (which you can turn on or off in the app, so no worries there). There’s also the downside of not having access to many features like toggling through the different modes (active noise canceling or whatever other bullshit like that), not being able to natively see the battery of the case or earbuds (though, like with the aforementioned feature, using an app like CAPods you can see it), and some others that I can’t recall at the moment.
Sorry about the length of this reply, I was originally just going to mention the bluetooth beanies as a joke, but I have nothing else to do at the moment, so why not share my experiences? Anywho, that’s my two cents, this could help, it could be utterly useless, you could already know all of this, you may not even read the wall of text, etc. etc… Do as you will with this.
You don’t happen to know if there’s some open-source software for Android that might be similar to CAPods? Tbh I’m probably never going to buy either airpods or the brand-name Samsung ones, but I’d imagine there might be a more universal solution?
Yeah, I don’t actually recommend buying airpods unless you got them for free if you’re an Android user (that’s the only reason I’m using airpods atm).
As to open source, I believe CAPods is, unless you’re referring to an open source app for most headphones (which upon second thought you probably are).
As to that question, CAPods, according to their GitHub page, supports a few Beats devices, this app for Galaxy Buds on Windows/Linux devices, and this one for Huawei Freebuds device(s?).
Overall, the closest I could find was GadgetBridge, which has support (partial or full) for a few Samsung devices, one Nothing, a few Sony, and Bose(?), though, I did keep running into internal server errors, so it might be out of date.
I’ve had an S10E for a while and didn’t even know the headphone jacks are no longer the norm!
Clinging to my S9+ so hard.
I was lucky i found this store that sells second hand devices from big companies that have bought too many? ( dunno how it actually works), but the quality is sometimes fully new, or have been used briefly; much cheaper and older models like my S10E, which I think it’s from 2018.
I tend to break phones rather often unfortunately (very clumsy, small hands and lack of pockets) so I want to have something like this still available. I do use screen and case protectors and all that. It still lands on the floor quite often :/
Not really, it’s mostly only budget phones that have it nowadays. The S10E(which stands for ‘essential’ btw, not ‘enterprise’) is almost 5 years old, not exactly representative of the modern phone market.
To be fair, on the modern phone market it doesn’t really matter whether you spend 300 or 1000. They’re all decent ish
People keep going on about that and I get it from the point of not having to charge headphones all the time. But to me that is a very mild inconvenience compared to having to deal with those fucking cables all the time. I hate cables so damn much.
Oh, my problem isn’t with charging them. They actually hold a charge for a super long time.
I’d like bluetooth earbuds a lot more if I could find some that aren’t “smart.” If I put on a beanie, I bump them. If I remove one earbud to converse, I bump it. I’ve not once intentionally used a gesture-based control on an earbud for anything else other than undoing the situation I’ve caused by bumping them. Otherwise, I control everything with my phone. If I’m working out, I just select my playlist, mute notifications, and I don’t have to touch anything after that. Gesture-based earbuds are not for me.
I really don’t think there are dumb bluetooth earbuds, though. At least, I haven’t been able to find any.
And I don’t mind cables as much as you do. I think my favorite earbuds would be those that are connected to each other by a cable, but again – only if they were not smart.
Not sure what brand you have but mine you can turn off the functions on the buttons in the app.
Which app? I usually use YouTube or Spotify. I doubt I need a dedicated app for earbuds.
The brand is Jabra, they have an app associated with them where you can change various settings on how the earbuds work. One of them is what the buttons do.
You can turn off the touch controls on Samsung Galaxy Bud Pros, maybe the other galaxy bud models too
For most of these, turning off touch controls means that when you accidentally trigger the touch commands, it plays a little jingle and pushes a notification telling you that youve disabled touch controls and you need to reenable them.
Completely defeating the fucking point of turning off touch controls, and making me want to wrap my hands around the throat of the idiot who designed that
On my buds if I turn on “block touches” and I touch them nothing happens, no jingle or notification. But yeah that does sound like a stupid feature
Here’s the crazy thing tho… You could just not use it and choose to use blue tooth still.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a port, just saying that I really don’t see the value.
It’s more than just having to charge them I wouldn’t even really consider that much of a downside with how long they last. I haven’t yet ran out of charge before I was ready to take mine out. The actual downsides are- Wireless earbuds are expensive. The batteries in them wear out over time and you have to buy all new ones which is wasteful. Bluetooth adds a noticeable delay that sucks when watching video. My car doesn’t have bluetooth so I need a headphone jack for AUX. I have both and like wireless ones when I’m on the go but if I’m stationary wired don’t cause any problems.
The newest Asus zenfone is still rocking it!
HTC just came out with a phone that has a headphone jack AND expandable memory. I hope they go for a gen 2 in the near future since it had some kinks to work out, such as a curved glass screen, becase then it would be just about everything I could ask for in a phone.
This going away has just make the Tiktok tide that much more horrendous. I work in a school. The hallways are nothing but that horrid shit blasting out of hundreds of bad speakers.
You don’t think it’d still be the same even with the headphone jack still there? Wireless headphones and converters for wired headphones do exist, they just don’t care.
In smartphones
- Replaceable batteries
- Headphone jack
- Software unlocked parts
- Root-able phones
In PCs
- No-RGB components that only prioritise performance
- No nonsense PC cases that are just a black box with awesome airflow
- GPUs that don’t need a mortgage
Everything. We’re down to barebones and marketing now focus solely on camera software updates or phone materials (“now with titanium!” How fucking sad is that?) And they are all selling the same phone.
Some of the most important loses…
Swappable batteries changed travel for me. Always having two extra charged batteries in my backpack, that you could swap top 100% in 20 seconds, made me ONLY use my phone as a free and completely useful tool without any planning or restrictions on my use. Otherwise, you can’t take too many pictures or videos, stream music or video or make video calls too long or you might be fucked when you need phone, GPS, payment or to get a rideshare to where you’re staying.
Audio jack similarly meant freedom. Bluetooth headphones out of battery, broken or one earbud lost? Have a pair of wired in the backpack always add backup. Also better audio quality through wired with DAC on certain models and less daily device load to charge/babysit
secondary screens LG V10 had a bar on top, they also had the T shaped dual screen phone and the secondary screen phone case. There was just creativity and attempts at innovation.
microSD expandable memory, again less and less available and this was about freedom - fuck your cloud storage add its data leaks, corruption and redaction. I own my data, you don’t control it.
HEADPHONE JACKS
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.
Highly recommend it.
Ooh, thank you I will check that out. That sounds great.
New phones have always on displays where you can configure them to show any info you want
They’re not all that configurable and it’s always a wall of useless text notifications and it’s hard on battery life, 100x less useful.
No. Not what I want.
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.
A headphone jack
A home button
Replaceable battery
3.5 headphone jack
I swear phone manufacturers have gradually made the audio jack worse on phones just for the justification of dropping it.
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.
Apps like Garage Band are completely useless over Bluetooth.
Came here to say this.
I forget which Samsung galaxy model it was, maybe S6, but it had a universal IR blaster built into the phone which was super convenient for controlling all of my devices. I did however often abuse the shit out of it by flipping the channels on bar tvs or turning off the stereo receiver and nobody was ever suspecting it was me on my phone. I guess that’s probably why they removed it lol, but it was fun while it lasted.
Got an IR watch in high school before universal remotes were a known enough technology. That teacher must have really hated that day. Sorry Mrs Desgagné if you’re out there.
Unsure about the S6, but my S5 (which I still have and currently use as a dashcam in a pinch if I’m not in my usual car) definitely has an IR blaster and yeah, it was so good to just flick on the TV in the living room, or notice that my parents TV was still on while they were sleeping and I’d just turn it off from my phone.
Most features that smart phones had. Most prodomimantly the micro SD card slot, headphone jack and IR blaster.
I miss IR blaster on my phones, so handy.
There are lots of phones with micro SD and headphone jacks.
My Motorola G60s has either dual sim or sim with SD and a headohone jack. Also has a 120hz screen. Just missing the ol IR blaster
Yeah but they’re all the lower end phones, all the major flagships removed the features three or four versions ago, I don’t want to have to sacrifice camera or screen quality in order to have features that should be built into phones by default
I’m going to say that today, even on lower-end phones, the screen, processor and camera are all pretty decent.
I have a Motorola G31, which cost about 200€ one year ago, when I got it. It has a Micro SD Card Slot and a headphone jack. The screen is plenty good (1440p,60hz) (why would you need 120hz or 4k on a phone) And the camera is also quite nice. It has no fancy features, but it takes pictures and that’s all I need.
From my perspective, flagship phones are impractical and overpriced to say the least.
Ive been using 144/165hz monitors for years now and it’s jarring going back to 60 hz
I only spent $290 Cdn after shipping and taxes for my moto g60s. I 100% agree, flagship phones are unnessesary.
120hz is amazing for scrolling through feeds, it is absolutely night and day. It is like turning off the annoying motion blur in a video game.
Then dont go for the flagship phones?
What does a $1000 phone do that my $250 phone cant?
Shit this POS im using can even record at 240 fps
That’s really that is why I went with the phone I have, out of the phones that I looked at all of them were a downgrade for the screen, and generally camera. Or lacked the tower support in my area since we barely have LTE
How about, I don’t want to sacrifice features that should be built into phones by default for camera or screen quality!
But by removing all the ports and turning them into screen monoliths, we can now safely pee on them.
And yet, we still don’t have a phone that can pee on us. Engineers are so culture-deaf.
Lots of phones still have those. Notably all Redmi phones have a SD card slot, and Redmi still sells new phones with IR blaster, and most have a headphone jack too.
I’ve looked into those phones, the specs look nice but they don’t work in my region, unfortunately rural areas of the US don’t have Tower support for those style models(yay refusal to upgrade any sort of infrastructure). many of my friends that are overseas have stated that they love the phones though.
Sony xperia should work. Though it doesn’t have IR blaster :/
AFAIK, Xiaomi doesn’t sell anything in USA, by purpose.
Is it intentional? I figured it was because the US still predominantly uses the CDMA standard where none of their phones support the CDMA standard as a whole in favor of GSM and LTE the rest of the world uses
My first Samsung had a removable battery. Haven’t seen one since.
i wish my pixel 7a had those
Not a feature but I do miss phones having side bezels. You could firmly hold your phone and not disturb the content on your phone. I can barely use youtube now because i keep touching my screen apparently
The audio port for headphones and headsets. Replaceable batteries. Extendable storage. Fuckers charge 100x more for every little upgrade now.
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.
3.5/4.4 jacks are a beautiful thing.
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.
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It’s a better experience for higher speeds and better stability, not for convenience.
Headphone jack.
