-SD card expansion - what we could once count on to use phones like mirrorless cameras is now gone so they can rip you off for higher non expandable storage (128GB SD? $10. 128 -> 256 GB base? $200)

3.5mm - why buy cheap wired headphones when you can force people to spend 10x as much on wireless! Coming up with a solution to a problem they invented.
IR blaster - yes I used it since it worked on TV, receiver, DVD player, air conditioner, etc. Also super convenient if you have used stuff you bought without the remote
FM radio - yes I used it again since no data needed! Can also be fun to listen to campus radio or when travelling
notification led - The RGB led was pretty good when you had binds foe each app to know who texted you and why. Always on OLED draws substantially more power than the LED did
Always unlocked bootloaders - the custom ROM scene was pretty big at one point, but has shrunk as more manufacturs have begun locking bootloaders 'for safety'
removable battery - phone no longer holding a good charge? $15 fix. Was also super convenient since I bought a spare that I kept charged and in my bag, meaning I could go 0% to 100% in 2 mins... better than fast charge!

List could go on for longer. Maybe it's just nostalgia but I do miss some of those days.

[–] Melody@lemmy.one 12 points 2 months ago (4 children)

            
              Losing SD Expansion sucks; they should bring this back. Only reason they stopped this is greed.
Yet another Nice-To-Have that is gone; but I've never seen any phones that weren't Samsung with this. This one doesn't really even affect waterproofing; or phone size so they have no excuse.
I certainly miss this one; but the FM Radio was present back on my 2020 Moto G6 Power. It was present on my 2020 Moto Edge. This one got stolen from us because we lost the 3.5mm Jack too...they used the wire from your wired headphones as an FM Antenna lead.
This is nice; but I ended up having to root my Nexus 6 to make this work properly and use all the colors the LED could perform. I don't really miss it with Bezel-less phones.
I hate that bootloaders are frequently locked; but it's been less necessary to root Android as it's improved over the years. There are still a few pain points; but not quite as many that require root.
This is another case of greed. There's no reason why we shouldn't have removable batteries for phones that aren't IP67 or higher. If it ain't waterproof; there's no reason to seal the battery in...and replaceable batteries is a benefit when they accidentally ship units that become "spicy pillows" when the batteries swell due to bad batteries. It also simplifies disposal of phones; which don't need disassembly if they've got a removable battery.

[–] FarFarAway@startrek.website 6 points 2 months ago

My old HTC one had an ir blaster. It was great.

[–] JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

The newest HTC phone had a headphone jack and expandable memory. Hopefully they keep going down that route and keep up the software support and I might have to consider them.

[–] TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

IR blasters are very common on Chinese brand phones even today. It's easily the feature I miss most from my Huawei.

[–] Melody@lemmy.one 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ah; I don't use Chinese branded phones at all. Never have.

Phones in the US market do not usually have them, unless they're Samsung branded, and since I don't include Chinese made phones in that "group", what I'm saying is true for the US.

[–] TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I'm based in the US and that's where I used my Huawei phone until recently. OnePlus is among the manufacturers that still do IR blasters, and it looks like the OnePlus 12 has one and is easily purchased from their US store page.

As far as I can tell Samsung hasn't released a phone with an IR blaster since 2015 either. Essentially, IR and Samsung hasn't been a thing for a long time. If we are going by total volume then I would agree that the most common manufacturer in the US that has/had IR is Samsung. If we are going by new phones available today, then Samsung isn't even in the conversation.

I'm not entirely sure what this comment is in relation to yours, I don't think I disagree with you, I think I'm just adding some context or nuance.

[–] BorgDrone@lemmy.one -5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Losing SD Expansion sucks; they should bring this back. Only reason they stopped this is greed.

Fuck that noise. SD expansion was a terrible idea and I’m glad it’s gone. There are so many problems introduced by removable storage, it was a terrible PITA to deal with as a developer. One of Google’s dumbest ideas in early Android. Good. Fucking. Riddance.

[–] PM_ME_SNEKS_IN_HATS@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have honestly never heard this take but it makes sense. If you feel like elaborating more on why it's a pain for developers I would be interested. But like, I also have google if you don't feel like typing it all out lol.

[–] BorgDrone@lemmy.one 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Several things that made the SD card annoying to developers.

First: you could not install an APK on the SD card (probably due to DRM reasons). So if you had a larger app and you wanted users to be able to take advantage of the additional storage offered by the SD card you could not do this simply by having a large APK. (Note that this also was true for phones that had no removable SD card but had internal memory that presented itself as ‘external storage’).

On some phones the normal storage was so small that any larger app had to leverage the external storage to be able to even fit (we’re talking 10+ years ago). The way to do this was using so-called ‘expansion files’. These were additional data files, up to 2GB a piece, that could be installed on the external storage. These came with some additional difficulties.

They were pure data files, so they could not contain any executable code. They were just big binary blobs, so none of the Android built-in mechanisms for loading assets depending on screen density, screen size and all that stuff worked. You had to do it all by hand.
Since they were just binary blobs, you had to do any organization inside the files yourself. For example, they could be large ZIP files but you had to do all the ZIP handling yourself. Compared to normal APKs that are also ZIP files but where you can just load stuff from the APK archive and it’s all handled by the framework.
The expansion files were separate from the APK. The Play Store did try to automatically download them if your app had expansion files, but this was not guaranteed. Furthermore, because they live on an SD card they could disappear at any moment. Your app needed additional logic to deal with this, code to re-download the files if they were missing, code to handle errors during the download, UI to show the download progress, etc.

Another problem with SD cards was the huge variety in quality of SD cards. Phones internal storage is reasonably fast, but you never know what kind of cheap-ass yanky SD card the users installed in their phone. This caused all kinds of performance problems in more demanding apps and as a developer you had to deal with the fall-out (bad reviews, support requests, etc.)

[–] PM_ME_SNEKS_IN_HATS@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks for all the info. That's really interesting. I remember those phones that had like 2GBs of internal storage and 1.5GBs was taken up by the OS so you could have like 5 apps and 1 video on there before you needed an SD card. Those were a huge pain.

I also remember not being able to move certain apps to an SD card as it was restricted by the software. I used to wonder why, but that actually makes a lot of sense now lol.

Also, are you saying my SpamDisk 150TB SD card I got on wish for $0.93 is not good enough for you? Elitist.

[–] Melody@lemmy.one 5 points 2 months ago

Uh, No. Hell to the fucking no. Bring back SD expansion. Treat it like the data storage device it was.

Your beefs with Google are misplaced; because they were trying to mess with what folders were used; and with trying to protect user privacy because applications were misusing storage to violate their user's privacy.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah @PM_ME_SNEKS_IN_HATS@lemmy.world - this is a first! Also curious to hear more.

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