What discontinued feature do you miss from phones or other technologies?

Unlockable bootloader, removable battery, headphone jack, being assembled with SCREWS rather than GLUE.

Removable battery is the big one. I had a phone where they only cost like $15, so I could take 2 of them on a trip and last a week w/o charging.

User-replaceable batteries.

IR Blasters!

I feel like I'm the only one who used them or cares that they were quietly phased out of phones.

You used to be able to use your phone as a universal remote. Being able to control my TV, sound system, ceiling fan, and lights all from my phone was so convenient! Plus if you were stuck in like a waiting room and they had ads or garbage like Fox News on, you could change the channel or turn it off completely. It was an incredibly useful feature to me, but I guess barely anyone else used since it was removed from phones without any complaints.

Except me. I'm complaining!

Headphone jack

I miss the notification lights. One of my first true smart phones was the original oneplus. It was fun setting up custom colors for different types of notifications and came in handy every now and then

Fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. So you'd pick it up and your finger would naturally fall on the sensor, so that by the time you look at the screen, it's unlocked.

IR blaster. You could have a universal remote app and control any tv from my palm PDA

Headphone jack, dedicated fingerprint reader, removable battery, physical sim card trays

Edit: expandable storage

Physical keyboards.

• iris scanner
• Dedicated MicroSD card slot
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Removable/user replacable battery
• Metal backs
• Front firing speakers

This may sound dumb... An old Samsung phone I had years ago, came with alarms that gradually faded in. The most memorable, started with the ocean, and the seagulls... Then there was a fog horn in the distance. Slowly the horn got closer, and closer... Until it was all you could hear, and your alarm was going off.

I've looked everywhere for the sound file... It must be Locked away in a basement at Samsung somewhere.

One day I'll find it

A battery which lasts up to a week.

I miss my smart watch waking me up outside of detected REM sleep.

On the Microsoft Band you could set a time window where the alarm would go off - say between 0700-0800. If you're in REM sleep at 0700, the alarm stays off until you naturally rouse, or 0800.

I've worked as a sleep scientist for 7 years, and the idea of not being woken out of REM is such a neat idea, and yet no other watch seems to do it.

3.5mm headphone jack.

Being able reach the entire screen with one hand... Even with larger hands, reaching across a 6 inch screen with my thumb is bullshit and uncomfortable as fuck. I miss my iPhone 4S

Hardware keyboards on mobile phones

3.5 jack

Physical buttons. Sometimes an app or the OS itself will fuck up and not show you the home or back button for example.

I would miss headphone jacks but any phone worth buying still comes with those... for now

Replaceable batteries.

Charging once a week.

Small sizes

Multicolour notification LEDS - customisable for each app

Smaller camera bumps and less cameras in general - not everyone wants or needs to be a professional photographer.

Plastic bodies, with removable batteries via covers.

I don't know how many current phones support it but mine doesn't... Extendable storage via micro sd

Customisable vibration patterns for different contacts and apps - I remember how super old early Android Xperia phones being able to do this (alongside the LED mentioned above). I used to think this was stock android, I guess not. But if it was, why did they remove it, same guess for LED

The absence of notches

Headphone jacks and the ability to expand available memory using SD cards.

I like where phones are now for the most part, but the thing I miss the most is that magic moment of what leaps and bounds new technology/form factor/whatever was being incorporated into a new phone. Like when the iPhone was first announced or when Motorola announced (and marketed the hell out of) the original Droid - I can still hear the boot up sound.

I remember the debates and arguments had when the first 4+” phone was released and how it was “way too big” compared to the ideal sized 3.5” iPhone. The idea of swiping to type!? What a breakthrough! A fingerprint scanner to unlock your phone, that took like three or four tries some times and was met with skepticism by others.

Now I feel like, despite how monstrously capable are phones are now compared to even five years ago, there’s just not as much of a spark anymore. New phones are iterative and have been for a while. Bendable displays are sort of neat, but just doesn’t quite tap the same bit of magic for me.

FM radio. Sometimes it was nice to listen to the radio on my phone.

Tactile buttons

Once I get my next phone, I'll miss the headphones jack.

Battery life, even with massive batteries, modern phones only last a day while older phones could last up to a week between charges.

Privacy

Notification LED.

Headphone jack for sure. Like 90% of my phone usage is either listening to music or watching videos, so decent audio is like the only thing I care about lol.

I loved how older versions of Android (and afaik iOS as well) could set the album cover of the currently played song as the lockscreen background.

It's a tiny and maybe completely unnecessary feature, but i loved it.

I missed how I could set an alarm and then shut my blackberry off overnight and the phone would turn itself back on in the morning to alarm

Headphone jack and IR blaster

Tactile keyboards

IR transmitter, removable batteries (but they will come back), the notification LED.

Removable batteries

Batteries that lasted a week.

Multi-colored LED notification light - better yet the Nexus One trackball + multi-colored LED light in one.

Headphone jack is always nice. I don't use it anymore, if anything USB-C dongle is fine.

An indestructible phone. Nokia and Sony Ericsson had some phones that were stronger than a brick. This weak glass sucks.

I miss the IR blaster in the headphone Jack of my old s5 every day

Rear mounted fingerprint sensor 3.5mm Audio port

I refuse to use a phone without a headphone jack.

I had an htc one that could transmit IR signals meaning you could mess with TVs and other simple wireless electronics. You could also use the headphone wire as an actual radio antenna.

Removable batteries :(

Modern computers are slow.

Specifically, modern computers have inherently more delay time between the keyboard (or other input devices), the software, and the display than much-older (1980s) computers. This means that it is not possible to create games that are as responsive to player inputs as the arcade, console, or microcomputer games of the past.

USB is slow. HDMI is slow.

Removable battery and LED notification lights.

Honestly, I miss my hardware keyboard and not giving up so much screen real estate while typing.

I really miss small phones. Used to be a time when manufacturers were competing to make them as small as possible and Dell's 5" phone was universally mocked as too big.

I miss the gboard of 5 years ago when typo correction was spooky good.

I miss uploading my own songs to Google music.

I miss easily flashable bootloadera and roms.

I miss the three virtual navigation buttons.

I miss setting different notification dot colors for different apps.

I miss setting different notification sounds for different people.

Active Edge, which LG originally came up with and that Google adopted with the Pixel 2. Of course they dropped it after a few devices.

It was basically a button/key press that you could configure to trigger actions by firmly applying pressure with you hands around the lower third of your phone. It gave a very satisfying haptic vibration response based on the amount of pressure you applied and you could even set the amount of pressure until it was triggered. It had something magickal about it.

If you're interested in the tech: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/10/19/google-pixel-2-teardown-ifixit/

Physical keyboard. I miss touch typing one handed.

I miss the times when different phones had character. Even phones of the same company looked completely different:

Now it’s just the same rectangle stretched different ways and maybe different color sides.

I miss the notification LED on older Galaxy phones.

I miss the function when the phone would stay tethered to its cable at home where it wouldn't bother me all the time when I was out and about.

Yet another of Google's discontinued pet projects with tons of potential but that that they quickly lost interest in, my trusty (now officially unsupported) Pixel 4XL has a Soli Radar sensor that I'm going to miss when I finally break down and buy another phone.

It is so nice to be able to just wave generally in the direction of my phone to do stuff. I use it all the time when I'm driving to skip songs, or repeat the last song, or pause the music, etc. without taking my eyes off the road. It really is a shame to me that they threw a bunch of money at a legitimately cool project like that, and then seemingly just abandoned it entirely.

Add it to the list, I suppose.

I kinda miss flip phones? These days phones are too big for my hands and pockets. I find myself buying cheaper phones just so it's a little smaller.

The back fingerprint reader used to have gestures, so swiping down on it could for example open the notification shade. Was really good for not having greasy fingerprints on your screen

Nokia phones in 2000 could record your voice for any command you wanted. The voice command reliability of those phones is beyond superior to what is offered by today's voice assistants.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 had a feature in the camera app which would take several pictures in a row and you could then choose the one with best quality. Extremely useful feature especially in low light. I'm sure there's an app out there that can do this but I can't find one.

I'm not sure exactly what it was called but any time you took a photo with a Note8, it was always taking photos from right before to right after the photo. This resulted in much fewer garbage photos because a few frames before or after the shutter was pressed would be a better photo, one that is not blurry! Now instead of a useless photo, I would have at least something workable. I have not seen that on any other phone with this feature, including my current one.

Welp - I'm thoroughly convinced to never upgrade from my BlackBerry Key1. I will hang on to my multi-day battery life, 3.5mm headphone jack, keyboard, notification LED, fingerprint reader, and cheap, replaceable parts till phones stop being a fucking thing.

I recognize this list of "Gone for everyone but me" may not be perfectly in the spirit of this question, but all the same: Thanks everyone! :D

The IR blaster on my galaxy s6. Not the most used feature, but when the Air BnB didn’t have all the remotes it was a life saver.

Phones: ability to throw it on the ground without anything bad happening to it.

Other: software that you could just own.

Dunno if this counts, but screens that fit in my goddamn pocket.

SensMe in Sony and Sony-Ericsson phones and players. It was the tool that analyzed your music collection and sorted it according to energy, mood and tempo.

The best variant was on the later products whey you had a list of channels representing either moods/styles (Energetic, Emotional, Lounge, Dance etc.) or time of the day (from 'Morning' to 'Midnight'). The results were very good, especially for the time channels (except the morning) which were perfectly fitting the mood and pace of times of the day, much like Indian ragas. It really felt like your personal radio stations, freeing you from having to make playlists by yourself ever again...

It was discontinued in 2010s because of declared low adoption by users according to some obscure internal studies :( I've been dreaming of replicating it using Python ever since, but never had time to do a proper research.

Not really a feature. But I really I wish I could upgrade my phone. Like, get a new camera with better quality or a new battery with higher energy density in an older phone. Stuff like this.

Physical keys that you had to type multiple times to get letters. I could write a whole text message with my hands in my pocket.

Predictive text like my Nokia's T9. It knew how English worked and what the probability of a word in context was.

Now it's all: "the same time and consideration and I are going to be a good time to get the latest Flash player is required for video playback is unavailable right now because this video is not available for remote playback is unavailable right now because this...."

Keyboard and the ability to physically close the phone to turn it off/sleep/hangup.

The Snake game you could play on push button phones. Oh my goodness.

The knock code really was so convenient and safe. No way for other people to see it.

I was an avid fan of LG phones, especially the G series. I mean yeah, some features were kind of pointless (G5 Module??)

I had a 2nd Gen moto x. It had proximity sensors around the screen that allowed you to make gestures over the phone to do things like check notifications, pause music, dismiss calls, etc. They also offered a lot more customization options than any other phone I know of. Mine had a leather back, which was available in a few colors. They also had several options for wood backs. It was a really nice phone and I was sad when it died.

Not phones, but TVs. My first flatscreen tv(not a smart tv yet) had a picture in picture mode, so I could play games while my family watched TV. That was nice, but it seems to have just vanished as a feature in modern TVs.

The LG V10 had the smartest way I've seen to handle the notch: by keeping it on a corner, and using the top of what was left of the screen to display quick-access icons, notifications, and the clock. The rest of the screen kept the good old 16 by 9 aspect ratio with a square display. Kind of peeves me to see video players cropping part of the video where the notch is nowadays...

So back in the day you could hold home to pull up Google assistant and tell it to translate whatever was on your screen. No matter what app, browser, etc it just worked. I have no idea why they ever got rid of it. Now with the modern version of tap to translate text has to be highlight-able in order to be translated, which is a bone headed decision. It's like they never use the stuff they make.

I miss the kick stand that HTC phones had. Yeah I know there are phone cases with kick stands, but in my experience they don't work as well.

Knock code, wow, I didn't even remember it, but yeah it was pretty neat. I would say it's the IR blaster for me. It was quite useful.

I had an old flip phone that came with a demo of Uno. I could play a single hand, then reset the demo and play again and again. There was only a nag screen when you were exiting/restarting the demo, and not a single other ad.

Passed hours with that little game.

I miss mobile gaming when it was like that.

Notification LED's, a REAL proximity sensor (not just the Selfie Camera), the headphone jack, a dedicated Fingerprint Sensor (because under display sensors are still bad).

I read this as planes and was gonna say the little wings they give you as a kid. I'm still gonna say it cause I miss that

Smaller, narrower phones generally. Blackberry keyboards (and slideout keyboards) in particular.

Loved the various hardware oddities of the moto Z line: a rear fingerprint scanner that was easy to use while holding the phone, and of course the magnetic attachments. Used to carry two batteries that could hot-swap, and a game controller in my bag.

Sticking with LG the little AOD app icon that would pop up when you get a notification on the V60. Forgot how much I missed it.

the neatest thing about pixel phones for me was the squeeze to snooze... I'm hanging on to my pixel 3 because of that, since I constantly need alarms and to postpone them for medicines etc. they removed it on pixel 5 onwards and no other phone seems to have it

a big shame that it doesn't allow you to assign it to other things though ... google sucks

Well, I suppose is old/discontinued, but my current phone has a motorized camera (Poco F2 Pro) I am not a selfie guy, so I could not care less about it, having no notches nor punch hole camera is nice AF.

You can even hide the navigation pill and mix it with some apps like Connect for Lemmy and you literally get 100% of content in your screen lol.

A tactile keyboard. There was a time when I could text with my eyes closed (literally). Now it takes me 30 seconds to "type" out a text that should take < 10 seconds.

The OnePlus 7 Pro and 7T Pro had a pop-up front-facing camera. No notch, no pinhole, no buttons at the bottom to mar the perfect full screen. It was gorgeous. My (tragically bricked due to my own water-based stupidity) OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren is probably my favorite phone I ever used.

Sharing contact information directly phone to phone.

Lock screen widgets, giving me information at an actual glance without the risk of getting sucked into other random bullshit.

Those missing physical buttons to type. Have you used swipe typing? It saves a massive amount of time, not tap tap tap, it's just swype across the screen to the letters and you're good. Very easy and fast.

Apple’s 3D Touch. It was predictable, reliable, and, apparently, under-utilized by the world around me.

i really liked the Soli sensor that Google used on the singular phone. I loved waving across my phone to change the track but y'know google and how they be killing everything cool ever :(

There were a couple of phones HTC made (both under their name and rebadged as early Google Pixel phones) that could detect squeezing the phone as a programmable button press. It seems like it'd be clunky and triggering at the wrong time or not triggering reliably when you needed it but it was just really well implemented so it worked perfectly. Slightly increasing how tightly you're holding the phone is such a tiny thing to do so getting a full extra programmable button out of it was actually really useful for making your day to day phone usage slightly smoother and more efficient.

I'm guessing it just didn't get enough use because people aren't likely to try it intuitively.

I miss the rooting era before google safety net. I rely on a lot of banking apps and other stuffs that require safetynet. Even though they are tricks to hide root and bootloader status, it is pain in the ass. Fuck I can't do whatever I want on my phone right now. If there was no safetynet my phone will be running pixel experience or lineage os.

So basically a pin? But the screen can be off?

I'm still using a Samsung S7 (but only for a few months more now, it needs upgrading), and it surprised me that most flagships have removed good features!

I knew about no physical nav buttons and the headphone jack, but why the SD card slot? Come on!

I would pay extra to have 3D Touch back

I liked the People Hub that Windows Phone 8 started with. But none of the social media platforms wanted you to be able to use their services without seeing their ads so ...

my old phone, a samsung j7 i believe, had a live concert feature that would make the music sound much more like you were at a concert, it was a complete gamechanger in listening to live albums. my new one doesnt have that feature :(

I miss them being small and slim. I still use my iPhone SE everyday for a music player. It’s the perfect size for a cell phone.

• Sent from my iPad.

IR blaster in my phone.

:beep beep: Where you at? -nextel direct connect

There is no way to play CD audio in the background on an X Box anymore. It used to be in Groove Music, and then supposedly in Windows Media Player, but I can't find either of those in the store.

I don't actually miss much, but I also don't really use my phone a whole lot. I have a smartphone, but it's pretty close to factory settings. I don't really install apps outside Line, I very rarely make calls on it. It probably gets used for transit directions/maps, mail, and Line 90% of the time.

Maybe not a specific feature, but I do dislike the general trend towards large and larger phones/screens. I must prefer the smaller phones we used to have; I know Apple had their smaller phone lines recently but I think they didn't do particularly well.

I thought I missed actually having buttons for things, but recently I found out that no, touch screens are usually superior.

Fingerprint readers are a bad idea for a variety of reasons. So this does seem like a loss! What a cool concept.

Squeeze to activate Google Assistant, from the Pixel 2 XL (and maybe others, I don't remember)

3D Touch was one of my favorite features on iPhone. When they took it away, it just didn't feel the same. Now I'm primarily a Pixel user

Aux ports are nice for versatility, even if I was already using wireless earphones. Along with being able to listen to FM right on your phone. It's features I don't use often, but occasionally. I wish the USB-C connector had the option with a clip. IR-blasters were useful and much fun. I never even used the actual remote to manage my LED strip.

I never realized notification lights just kind of stopped existing. But I don't miss them in light of always on displays. Under screen finger print readers is basically a dream come true. Having multiple cameras is nice. OLED screen is an absolute godsend. Overall I'm not unhappy.

I have a friend that will only use a flip phone physical keyboard + smart phone features. I don't really care and miss nothing.

SIM card trays for sure.

ITT: people who bought the wrong phone then complain.

Since a lot of the other ones have been said already I'll do one that hasn't been said yet:

3D Touch

I know I'll miss the alert slider from my current OnePlus phone, when I have to replace it in the future. On the other hand, I miss the fingerprint reader in the power button. Its just more reliable.