What's your least favourite thing about your smartphone

No removable battery.
- Fixed battery and removal of headphone jack and SD card slots were 1000% anti-consumer practices designed to cost you more money and make your device lifespan as short as possible. I don't see the battery problem going away - why enable your phone to last twice or three times as long when they can just force you to have to buy a new device when the battery is shot? At least we got our card slots and jacks back (mostly).
  I am also salty that phones USED to have IR blasters and they don't anymore. IR LEDs cost next to nothing, another feature that was amazing but thrown away to save 5c per unit.
  
  battery
  I don't think that this is a conspiracy by phone manufacturers to force purchases of phone hardware.
  All kinds of devices use fixed batteries these days, not just smartphones. It's cheaper, lighter, makes the device stronger, avoids them having to deal with "User X bought a counterfeit battery that then caught fire" -- that's a real issue for lithium batteries, unlike traditional alkaline/NiMH-type removeable batteries. Virtually the only device class I can think of where removable lithium batteries are the norm is high-end flashlights -- anything on !flashlight@lemmy.world probably supports removable 18650s or similar. I have gone out of my way to get a lot of devices that use AA batteries or maybe 18650s, but there are just tons of products, including in highly-competitive, low-barrier-to-entry industries like gamepads, where it'd be impossible to form a cartel to refuse to offer a device with removable batteries. And yet they've mostly moved to fixed batteries. There is no industry convention for removable, BMS-enabled, lithium batteries the way AA or the like were traditionally used in devices. If there were a cartel driving this against consumer wishes as a whole, you would have just smartphones doing the fixed battery thing, not the consumer electronics industry as a whole. If it were cartel-driven, I'd also expect to see, in a situation like that, manufacturers making hefty use of price discrimination -- like, think of how some laptop vendors charge a premium for devices with a lot of RAM when they have soldered RAM. But in the market today, the differences in battery size are minimal. Google makes a "large" version of the Pixel, and they barely bump the battery up, even with a slightly larger screen. Instead, it was associated with the shift across consumer electronics to non-removable batteries with the move to lithium batteries, which is what you'd expect if sketchy batteries were a problem.
  Phones in particular have a space and weight premium, so compared to a lot of devices that aren't held in your hand, using removable NiMH batteries or the like is more of an issue.
  
  I was super stoked to find out my OnePlus Open has an IR blaster! I missed it on my old galaxy note 4. It is surprisingly convenient, and doubles as a fun way to mess with TVs in public spaces.
  
  I can get the battery replaced on my phone for a fraction of the money it would cost me to buy a new phone. So I have to take it in to the shop for an hour. Big deal. I can do that once every few years. And I can still use wired headphones with my phone even though it doesn't have a headphone jack. Sheesh, I wonder how that works.
  The biggest anti-consumer practice to make your device lifespan as short as possible is whatever software update practices the manufacturer has. Annual major versions increase hardware requirements - I can tell every day how my 5 year old phone is getting long in the tooth. Lack of long-term software support is another way to make sure the average user buys a new device well before the old device has reached end of life.
- I recently got a de googled Fairphone 5 which has a number of removable parts, including the battery! Can recommend.

No good operating system preinstalled by default
No headphone jack anymore
- This plus no way to replace battery yourself or upgrade storage.

My fingerprint scanner was on the back, but now it's on the front, and can't identify me as regularly as it did before.
I've gotten used to the new location, but I can't forgive making it less accurate than it used to be.
- My god, I upgraded from an S9 to an S22 and seeing the fingerprint scanner on the front baffled me. With a screen protector on I unlock it on the first try maybe 25% of the time
  
  There's a setting you can turn on that increases the sensitivity, which should fix the issue. It works perfectly fine for me with a screen protector
  
  I went from a Pixel 3 to a Pixel 7. I hold on to my phones as long as possible.
  
  If you have issues with it detecting your finger try doing the "Check added Fingerprint" thing a bunch, apparently it can scan all of your finger more accurately, and get to the very edges and weird angles that the original scan never got. Seemed to improve the accuracy of mine a bit (never had big issues with it tho)
- I assume that it must be cheaper or something. I really preferred having it on the back too; was more ergonomic.
  ponders
  I guess that the front is maybe easier to use a thumbprint or something on.
  That being said, regarding accuracy, it might also have a lower false-positive rate, which is maybe something that you'd want.
- why on earth are people so comfortable giving private companies their fingerprint and face scans?
  
  The fingerprint is stored on your device. You don't give it to a company.
  
  Knowing how Lemmy is, I'll probably catch shit for this, but it's the truth:
  I just don't care.
  I won't say you're being paranoid because, I don't know for sure that there won't be repercussions, but I don't see a realistic downside considering the cops and FBI already have mine for clearances.
  
  My understanding is that these fingerprints are specific to your device and don't get stored in the cloud. If you buy a new phone, then you'll have to rescan your fingerprints.

the constant surveillance.

No fucking mini jack for headphones.
- I don't need a headphone jack all the time, but I really do fucking want one when I need it. Dongles suck.
- A big reason I replaced my old S10+ with a battery that wouldn't even hold half a day with Xperia 1 VI is that it has both the headphone jack AND an SD card slot. Might be the only flagship left that has both...

- I can't remember how I did it but I finally figured out a way to turn that shit off. My phone is pretty old, though. They probably took that away on the newer phones.
  
  bxActions, probably? Turn the useless button into something you want.
- https://lemmy.ca/comment/11541614
- is that still around jfc
  consider pixel with calyx or graphene as your next choice, you don't have to suffer like this
  
  It's not on the s24

Touchscreen basically being unusable in any kind of rain no matter how light

The lack of a fucking headphone jack
- That's the exact reason I have only bought budget phones. That, and they actually have a sim/sd card slot.
  
  I 'downgraded' this year and realized what an upgrade having one of those was. We cannot cede those things.

I'm relatively content with my Pixel 4A running LineageOS (with root), but that's an experience that's really only suited to very technical users, in large part because some apps actively resist running in an environment the device owner actually controls.
My complaint is with the smartphone ecosystem as a whole: it's designed to empower the OS vendor and app developers over users. The entire tech world (outside Microsoft and maybe some corporate IT types) saw Microsoft Palladium as a nightmare scenario a couple decades ago. Now we've let Apple and Google do the same thing with barely a grumble out of the mainstream tech press.

Missing status LED. I'd like to deactivate the always on screen feature.
- I remember using an app on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus where you could set every notification to a different color, for every app. Cost me like $2. Last phone that had a notification LED (dunno if it was the Note 4 or Note 8) had only some basic configuration and the app was no longer maintained. Now, I don't have the LED anymore. Sad.
  Maybe if I could have always-on display, but only with a virtual notification LED, I'd be happy.
  
  That shit used to baked into vanilla android.
  
  I loved doing that with the LED in the tracball on the Nexus One.
- After getting a smart watch, I no longer miss that. But I certainly did for many years.

Least favorite things? Hmmm...
Things that I want on my phone:
-headphone Jack
-user replaceable battery
-micro SD
-good camera
I know the specs would be terrible nowadays, but in terms of physical features and overall design, I think phone design peaked around the Samsung S5.
- Take a look at the Sony Xperia VI
  
  I was looking at that at one point. Looks nice, but pretty expensive for what it is and software support is not great (last I checked they only had like one major android version update). Honestly I just want a Pixel a series with the above features. Likely to run GrapheneOS on my next phone.
  
  I wish the Sony still made a compact Xperia.

How much Google controls the software experience and locks it down.
Currently I wish I could run a local HTML/CSS/JS App on my browser (like you can easily do in any desktop OS) but I can't.
UPDATE: I found a way!! I have to run a local HTTP server on my phone using an app like "Simple HTTP server", put my HTML/CSS/JS into a folder targeted by the server, and then go to http://127.0.0.1:8080/ in Chrome (it doesn't work in Firefox for some reason).
- From what I know, we've been able to do this for at least 15 years.
  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36632649/running-node-js-on-android
  
  Thank you, I'll look into this! Unfortunately, since my phone is Android 13, it doesn't look like Termux would function properly, and the rest of the answers are very old and seem to require lots and lots of setup. What is the easiest way?
  
  Update: I got node.js to do a simple program. Now, I want it to run a much larger program involving playing audio.
  Update 2: I can't get node.js to play any audio, and I cannot install the non dependencies for some reason.

That it's 7 years old and I can't find a replacement that isn't a downgrade in functionality.

It's too big. I couldn't get a phone the same size as my old one without sacrificing the micro sd slot so I ended up with something bigger than ideal
- I don't even want removable anything, I just want more small phones.
  The last iPhone mini was a good size but I couldn't stand iOS. My Pixel6a is a little too big for my tastes.

My least favorite thing is it is getting old and I can't find a good equivalent to the Pixel 4a to replace it with. They are all too big, have no headphone jack, and are too expensive for what I get out of them.
- Zenfone 9? Pixel 5a? About the only remotely close options I found out there. I went with the 5a, but it's getting close to end of life, so I'm debating the slightly newer zenfone 9 now...
  
  I did look at the Zenfone 9 actually and my biggest issue was the locked bootloader and no custom rom support. It may not be a total deal breaker, but it was enough to give me pause. The 5a would be great if it wasn't nearly as old as the 4a. I would still be considering Pixels if they hadn't ruined the "a" line.
- Oh, I know what you're talking about. I got a "new" phone a few months ago. Was thinking about either the pixel 4a or Samsung S10e, and went with the latter.
  The cool thing is that both of these phones have LineageOS support. I didn't try it yet, but LOS sounds pretty awesome, I hope that I won't be disappointed.
  
  LOS is fine, though I haven't used it in a while. I may just try and get a new battery in my 4a as the screen is still perfect and all the ports work fine. Still after using this phone for four years, I'd love an upgrade.

I want a physical keyboard again. I cam't type on these damn tochscreen buttona. They're too small and i canct tell which keya i'm toiching.
- This just triggers this memory in me every time: https://youtu.be/BPNzbbXjJsQ?t=108

The lack of basic things that used to be standard many years ago. Namely headphone jack and micro-SD card slot missing.

Google cutting off customization and generally being annoying and creepy. I know I can install some other OS on it, but at the same time I don't want to deal with Google's "play protect" thing.
- Google ~~cutting off customization and generally being annoying and creepy. I know I can install some other OS on it, but at the same time I don't want to deal with Google's "play protect" thing.~~
  yes
- I've been slowly migrating a lot of screen time from phone to laptop.
  Phones can do some neat things, and they're the best device class for one-handed use -- and that does matter. You aren't gonna poke at a laptop in the car to pause music or something. If you're waiting in a line, easy to pull a phone out. And they have very low power requirements.
  But a laptop running Linux is just a far more-open and configurable platform.
  And even aside from the software restrictions, the hardware is generally a lot more capable. It's a lot more-comfortable to type on a laptop than a phone.
  A smartphone is dramatically better than a laptop at being a portable phone. Laptops don't have a super-low-power-but-a-5G-modem-is-active mode.
  But for most other things...a laptop is just a considerably-more-capable option. Web browsing. Posting on Lemmy. Editing text. Games. Has better hardware expandability and connectivity. Easier to repair. Better diagnostic tools. OS doesn't EOL in a few years; I can probably run current Linux distros on truly ancient computers.
  And I don't really think that the smartphone industry is going to dramatically change on this direction in the foreseeable future.
  
  I agree on all points but the last.
  Over two hundred phones have been ported to postmarketOS and every person giving it a shot will improve it. Together with grapheneOS, there are huge possibilities to mix a phones versatility with the freedom of linux. Combined with manufacturers like fairphone and pine64, phones also become more easily repairable.
  The issue currently is that we have become ver accustomed to phones being very polishe. a lot of folks dont appreciate the free and open source phones and OSs due to their freakishly expensive, subscription ridden devices being optimized better.
  If tech interested folks would default to repairable phones and open OSs, we would make a considerable jump towards being mainstreamable.
  I‘m not saying people are at fault. Its just the way it currently is. We‘re seeing big improvements. I hope this continues.

Ever since smartphones exploded the expectation to respond IMMEDIATELY is out of control. Anyone who gets my number I warn them they'll be left on read for days if not weeks at a time. If it's important I'll respond but otherwise it's whenever I get time to decompress and respond. I've got a buddy who I love we respond to each other every other week mostly. We will even have calls in between. People really get entitled to others time and it's insane.
I know someone's gonna say it but no the entitlement wasn't even remotely as bad with the older phones. Smartphones began putting pressure to respond because it was easier and then they introduced the "seen" option followed by the "typing" option.

KATIE LEAVING ME ON READ WHEN I ASK FOR FEET PICS
- 😱
  
  Do we still say "name checks out" on Lemmy?
- Have you tried asking again? Or maybe she just wants you to send yours first

The fact that I have to pay money for it. This thing should be paying me. Actually, everything should be. You there, reading this, fucking $50, now.
Other than that? It doesn't have a front-facing bottom speaker. Basically everything else is perfect.
- Sure, I'll pay you 50$, but upon agreeing to do so - and by reading, replying, or not replying to this you thereby agree - you must give me triple the amount you have or will ask for, in euros, first.
  
  uno reverse card
  screaming
  😎

The shear amount of samsung/Microsoft bloatware on my samsung a55
- Maybe give the universal android debloater a try. Its a pretty useful tool.
  
  I did it I used universal android debloater new generation

Stupid large dimensions, it simply doesn't fit in pockets anymore

A rare Lemmy thread that has more comments than kicks.
- How do you know how many in here are wearing shoes?
  
  It's still 2 comments for every kick, fresh.

The hardware fuse samsung put in that flips when you try to change roms and can never be replaced. Wtf kinda world are we living in :/.

Lots of people covered other things I dislike more, so I'll say the curved screen at edges. I liked it flat better. It also makes it so much harder to install the screen protector.
- I also hated it when I had a OnePlus 8. Luckily it fell in the floor and the screen broke. My insurance repaid me the full price and with that I bought an Xperia 5 II. It is sooo much better with its small form factor, flat screen, its stereo front facing speakers, it's headphone jack and its long battery life!
  
  Funny how excited we are to get all those "outdated" features back.
  Literally the best real world example of "Absolutely nobody: " memes.
- Oooh! I HATE those!
  Like you said, the screen protector will not stay on, and I always ended up throwing off the touch sensor from my hand touching the edges.

I don't own it like my computer, i'm forced to use the OS that google put, and i don't even have root access to it

The fact that it's got a dedicated hardware button that is locked to something useless/arbitrary (bixby...)
- Which phone? You can change the bixby button behavior in the galaxy and Z phones

The bloatware. And custom Roms being dead for all except Pixel

The undocumented proprietary SoC and Modem. I want complete bit register level documentation of every piece of silicon used.

Battery life
Keeping too many things running in the background, making things laggy. (I do close out apps when I'm done using them, and I solve laggy times with the Optimize widget. I just wish it would automatically optimize)
- I have the opposite issue with background apps - I have 12 GB of RAM (16 on the tablet) and it still closes utilities sometimes and forces me to relaunch them (in some cases going back into settings and re-enabling accessibility services for example. That should never happen, in case it's Really for accessibility)
- Makes we wonder what OS you’re running. Most modern phone software “freezes” the app state when it’s in the background and frees up the memory for the frontmost app.
  
  Samsung Galaxy s22 with standard everything. I wish it did what you're describing!
- My phone is almost six years old and I’m so happy it still lasts all day, if I’m using it with screen on it lasts most of the day (7-8 hours of full screen time)
  Looks like I’m finally upgrading it this year and the idea of 30 hour video playback is fucking BONKERS to me.

Spam and ads

Context: I have an iPhone 14 and I drive a 2012 Fit. The Fit first gen came with a USB port that connects to the stereo.
When I connect my phone to the stereo in my car, 4/5 times the iPhone will launch the Music app, and play the first track in my library. That’s been true for quite some time (since iPhone 7 at least.) I listen to podcasts on a non-Apple app, and I listen at 1.5x speed. Since the iPhone 12, when I disconnect the phone from the car or turn the car off, there’s a 9/10 chance Music will start playing, at 1.5x speed. This clearly has something to do with Core Audio and the old dock connection system in iOS, and it will almost certainly not be addressed because it’s only going to affect older cars that don’t have 3rd party CarPlay stereos installed, and Apple only cares about CarPlay now.
- #distopiancaraudio

The constant UI changes that fix nothing of importance and make using it less enjoyable.
A recent update changed the options for navigation from being able to hide the three icons at the bottom and swipe instead to make it like an iphone where you have one swipe up and it does things based on whether you hold or let go immediately and now the sides are go back swipes. They kept the option to show buttons, but apparently keeping the two options and adding this new train wreck as a third option is too hard. So to use my fulll screen real estate I have the joy of accidentally going back a page dozens of times per day, holding or not holding the swipe up the wrong amount of time dozens of times per day, and when I crop photos I constantly catch the stupid edge go back thing and have to cancel. At least it asks first I guess.
Why couldn't they keep swipe up for three things if they kept the buttons in the same spot anyway? I am still trying to get used to the new stupid thing after a few months because the bottom buttons are such a waste of space.
That is the worst offender, but changing icons, how notifications work, and several other things are just annoying enough tl not drive me away but feel like change for the sake of change. I know some changes can require a lot of maintenance to have multiple options, but keeping a basic navigation option when adding a third should not jave been a big deal.
- If you are on a samsung you can maybe still enable the good swipe up actions with good lock navstar. There one can enable advanced gestures. Then you can disable the app again. The old swipe settings should be back.
  I tried the new ones but the swipe up ones are just way way better.

Had a Galaxy S8 and loved it. Got a Pixel 6 and now the slow fingerprint sensor is the bane of my existence. Why did they put it on the front? Why is that the standard now? It sucks, it's just slower and less ergonomic.
- Pixel 7 here from S10e. Still sucks. I hear finally Pixel 9 fixed it.

They are slippery. So they require a case. Why not, i dunno, make them easier to hold? The phone design doesn't matter if it's always hidden.

I just want micro SD and removable batteries again.

The camera bump.

Receiving calls and texts from people.

Can’t listen to music while watching a video or listening to a podcast.
- I feel you. Sometime i want to play white noise or lullaby to my baby on the speaker while listening to podcasts on the buds, but one pauses the other. It's an unnecessary software limitation.
  On a related note, it used to be possible to use a splitter to connect two sets of earbuds to watch a movie together on a plane. It's not possible now with Bluetooth, you can output sound to only one device.
  
  If you have an iOS device and AirPods you can actually do this.
  On another related note, I wish I could use my earbuds to listen to two devices at the same time. Like my phone and my Steam Deck.

The fact that it won't have any record of calls I missed while the phone was off or didn't have reception, although actually that's probably the fault of the service provider. They can send me texts I missed. Why can't they send me a list of missed calls?
- Mine sends me texts lol
- That's 100% a carrier issue. Nothing the phone can do about it.
- Every single operator I've had does this. Maybe you turned it off?

Probably the fact that I can't unlock the bootloader

Under screen fingerprint reader (pixel 7 pro) . It's a downgrade from reader on the back of the phone (pixel 5). It's slower, less accurate, and worst of all, at night it often results in being flashed with a bright light.
I thought it'd be more convenient having the reader on the front, so i can unlock the phone without lifting it, but most of the time it's a nuisance because i doesn't work as well.
- Having the reader on the back was easily the best spot. The only thing I miss from my old phone.

It's too darn big. I'd love another Nexus 4-sized phone.
- HELL YEAH! Finally someone who thinks they're too big these days.

Samsung bloatware
Not being able to access files in a sane way both from a computer and in some extent from a phone without using 3rd party solutions.
And yeah, that's it. But I am not needy.

In iOS how hard it is to glance the time and date while watching a full screen video.
- Between that and the godawful notification system, I feel like iPhone practically requires the Apple Watch.
  I do really like how well the Apple Watch works with the iPhone, but I do kinda wish Apple would just steal notifications, date+time in the drop down, and back gestures from both sides of the screen from Android.
  
  The focus mode ui is another bugbear - how scattered the ui is for this.
  I can alter it from the bottom middle of the notification shade once set, but I can’t enable it from there - why?
  At least put a line with date and time at the bottom of the notification shade so I don’t have to roll it all the way down.
  Also, I’ve set triple back tap to turn on the flash.. well, it only works (inconsistently) when the phone is unlocked. Why?

Have had my S8 galaxy since release, and now various apps won't work on the OS. I'm being forced into buying a new phone at this point.
- Install LineageOS?

non-unlockable bootloader :(
(Samsung S10e, switching to Sony Xperia 6 soon...)

Under screen fingerprint sensors. Doesn't matter how old/new your phone is, they all suck. The one on my phone works... whenever it feels like it. That and OneUI sucks, but yk, custom ROMs ftw.
- Reviewers were really happy they swapped the optical one for an ultrasonic one on the latest Pixel.
  Cheering because they gave us the slightly less bad version of something terrible.
  No one asked for this, you dimwits!
- The one on my OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition was fantastic. I miss that phone.

Lack of physical keyboard.
Being a flimsy piece of shit comes in second.
I'm aware how that applies to basically every smartphone from 2013 - today. Currently rocking a used Galaxy S8
- I often wish for a little slide-out keyboard at the bottom end of my smartphone.
- I was disappointed that the Android "BlackBerry" phones have such a bad keyboard. I still remember the one on my Bold 2, and I absolutely loved the shape of the keys. Touch typing at great speed was a breeze!!

Software updates. They are disguised as security and feature updates while slowing down your phone to make you buy the newer versions.

I wish I had customizable buttons for like... Flashlight, or you know... Whatever I want.
- Motorola lets you toggle the flashlight by shaking your phone, I use it a bunch. There's different motions for the camera and such, but I don't use those.
- OnePlus used to have lockscreen gestures. I could turn on or off the flashlight by drawing a V on the screen while it was turned off. Don’t know if they still do this.

The screen protector is peeling just a little bit around the edges, but it's put on really well, and I don't want to use the replacement just yet, but it's slowly ever encroaching and leaving more and more of a dead zone in an area I don't touch all that often, but when I need to I question whether or not it's time to put the new one on.
It's been like this for almost a year now.
Also no ir blaster, so I can't subtly mute the commercials when I'm at the in laws.

Not being able to install Graphene OS

its bootloader isn't unlockable, and custom roms don't exist for it anyway