Asklemmy

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.

I miss the notification LED on older Galaxy phones.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Other: software that you could just own.

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...

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.

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.

ITT: people who bought the wrong phone then complain.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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 :(