For me its the ‘Knock Code’ that LG had on their phones (I really wish LG still made at least the V series phones)
Basically there was a four-square area and you set up a sequence of where you would tap to unlock the phone. That set of squares was only shown when you set up the code
Then, to unlock your phone, you would tap those areas in the sequence you set up (even with the screen off).
Fingerprint readers are nice, but I really do miss the knock code
Edit: did find this article with a way to do the knock code, but if done wrong, could brick your phone I guess.
Plus, article is from 2014. When I looked at XDA’s info on it (they also being the developers) it looks like development on it is over, but individual modules may or may not still be supported by their devs
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
The sleep as android app has that feature. Set your alarm tone of choice and you can allow it to fade in. I have used this for years
idk why, but I dug around YouTube for an hour or so to try and find that alarm for you. I stumbled across one that’s so close to your description, though it’s from a BlackBerry, not a Samsung:
Is this the one?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/bOBaJHw36Dc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
ARE YOU READY KIDS?
AYE AYE CAPTAIN
That’s a good find. I would love a much longer version of this, like 10 or 20 minutes.
Do you want the exact same tone, or are you willing to try something new? My OnePlus has some tones similar to what you’re looking for I think. They start off gradually and gently and I’ve been using the same tone for years now and haven’t started hating it, which says a lot!
Sorry my app wouldn’t show me your comment to reply to, but it was updated yesterday and now I can see it. This playlist has the oneplus alarm tones. The one I like the most is called Dawn. I find it to be the best suited for my preference. There are lots more on that channel if you want to have a look.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/playlist?list=PLbxUYYPfrGGkdwPLyPQ1wvL8lQtCCLtm9
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
That absolutely does. As much as I loved the ship one, and would love to find that one, I found the concept a very healthy way to wake up. Didn’t panicked you, just got you up. Sorry, I may be living under a rock, is a one plus a phone? Or app?
I absolutely know what you mean and feel the same way. I hate being woken up to something that scares the shit out of me. This playlist has the oneplus alarm tones (it’s a phone company, not an app). The one I like the most is called Dawn. I find it to be the best suited one for my preference. There are lots more on that channel if you want to have a look.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/playlist?list=PLbxUYYPfrGGkdwPLyPQ1wvL8lQtCCLtm9
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Didn’t even know i needed that, nevermind it used to be a feature on a phone.
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.
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 :(
Any phone has EQ capabilities
it wasnt just that, it had a specific toggle for it
Check out ViMusic open source app (available on fdroid) and it’s equalizer feature, you can achieve pretty much same effect. Although it don’t work on all phones.
Physical keyboards.
I do miss the tactile nature of it. However, I honestly don’t think I’d trade screen space for it again.
Brave.
Wrong but brave
I could type almost three times as fast on a t9 as I can on a touch screen, and I’ve written an entire novel on a touch screen.
The old ways are forgotten. They were not wrong.
Preach it, brother!
What sucks is it would be easily doable.
Before smartphones were big I had a Samsung Messager (I think) with a slide out keyboard). Why not? A slide out keyboard would be sweet, and then you could choose to enable the digital keyboard if you wanted.
Wonder if they make a phone case with a keyboard (they certainly make the bluetooth keyboards for phones)
Edit: did some looking. It looks like they used to make these in a way I was thinking, such as this one
They don’t seem to make them that way now (at least not for phones). I did run into a phone that has a new-ish phone that has a physical keyboard
I’ve seen such keyboard, packaged neatly into a folding case. Problem is the keyboard doesn’t have enough weight to support the phone so it becomes awkward trying to hold the weight of the phone with your fingers while typing.
I still have my G1 and G2, both in their original boxes. I adored the G1 so much.
PinePhone with keyboard case!
Or even just the navigation buttons being separate from the screen.
I really miss how the blackberry volume rocker buttons would seek media on a long press
My oneplus does that when the screen is off. But you just reminded me how much I miss my blackberry curve, that thing was rad. One gripe was the trackball would get filthy, then they released the touch track thing.
Headphone jack, dedicated fingerprint reader, removable battery, physical sim card trays
Edit: expandable storage
I think it came a bit too soon. I had a mid-tier (couple hundred bucks) pair of headphones, so it was annoying to me until they broke and I moved to Bluetooth (Sony WH-1000 gang)
I’ve owned three Bluetooth headsets in total. The first I lost, the second is now my wife’s, and the third I still use. I wouldn’t call them disposable, but I’ll agree they are easier to lose.
Something a wired set of anything can’t give me is absolute freedom to move my head and walk away from my phone. I will never willingly go back to wired for anything other than gaming.
That is honestly impressive. I can confidently say I’ve only owned one wired headset for a decade, and it’s the one I use for gaming so it never leaves my office.
Everything else has either broken, or been lost. Though I fully admit, serviceable wireless buds would be a thing of beauty. IIRC there are people out there actively working on the problem (other than the companies explicitly aiming for them to be a consumable forever.)
I don’t know why you are downvoted. Wires are major breakpoint in many earphones. When i used a cabled earphones daily for hours as a student, one wouldn’t last me 6 months. I could not solder freely since they always broke near jack entry for some reason and i didn’t have cables around me all the time since i wasn’t an electrician. Finally last headphone i used had detachable cables. After that i used bluetooth all the way.
Couldn’t disagree more. Plenty of wired headphones and iems come with detachable/ replaceable cables. On the other hand wireless earbuds can be difficult to keep track of and easy to lose if one happens to fall out. If you lose one, congrats you have to buy a whole new set because they don’t generally sell replacements and usually come paired from the factory meaning getting a second replacement wouldn’t work.
I’ve got wired buds i bought ten years ago that are still kicking and wired headphones made in the late 80s that have only needed cup replacements. Wired headphones will cost half that of wireless for similar quality and if a cable is ever damaged and isn’t detachable it really isn’t difficult to solder in a new one.
God I wish I could get a pair of wired headphones with detachable/replacement wires.
Definitely something I really wanna invest in some day in the future since I have had pretty bad luck with the audio jacks breaking on me.
You should look into the world of IEMs and “chi-fi”. There are great sounding headphones with detachable cables that are still very affordable.
I definitely will look into this.
No affordable way around it? If you are approaching BT headphone cost, your headphones or buds will almost definitely come with a detacheable wire.
Personally my on the go is PortaPro, they dont have detacheable cable, the wire is flimsy but are only 30 bucks and the repair on them is actually super easy, the part where the wires solder on is actually easily accessible.
It’s probably a rarer use case, but I use the headphone jack on my S10 all the time to connect it to my stereo and get good audio quality, most cheaper bluetooth receivers only use SBC so the difference is quite noticeable. (Also because the S10 has a pretty good DAC).
I use IEMs when I’m on the go. It would be much better if I had the functionality of using that port instead of the charging port.
I dont care about the jack, the lightning-3.5 for 10bucks is more than a-ok, that said fuck bluetooth headphones, apart from the “smart” features, sub 50$ cans can and will blow the audio quality out of the water for many of the “entry level” (quotes cause entry is still approaching 100 bucks) BT ones and when you match price it is no-contest.
That said BT cans are still fine but after dabbling with hi-fi I can’t go back to BT.
I use them daily at work. Luckily I found a pair with a lightning connector. I also use cable in the car (it’s too old for Bluetooth) and it’s a pain not being able to charge and listen.
We have a Bluetooth adapter for our car audio and it’s great. Plugs into the aux jack and car power. Really handy not needing to plug in.
Same
Definitely miss the dedicated fingerprint reader. Had a metal case once that came with a fairly thick (tempered glass I think) screen protector. Everything worked great except the fingerprint reader.
Removable batteries may come back since the European Union has mandated all smartphones have them by 2027
physical sim card trays
Seems like a backwards move IMO. honestly haven’t needed a tray in ~6 years
I find them VERY useful because if you break your phone, you can just swap your sim into a backup immediately.
But honestly it’s not a huge deal, I swapped an esim in under 3 minutes last week
That tray is important to me at least since my last couple phones used that same tray to also hold the SD card. I can’t speak for anyone else, but a phone without an SD card for extra storage is a huge NO from me, so that tray is an absolute make or break for what my next upgrade is gonna be.
Samsung xcover pro
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php
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.
Yeah I might literally just replace the battery on mine than anything else
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.
I still use the IR blaster on my s5 when I go out. I never have to get stuck with fox news playing when I have it with me. It’s from 2014 and still kicking.
It also works on a lot on window mounted air conditioners, weirdly.
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.
You can still get really small phones - small enough that countries want to ban them for being too easy to smuggle into prisons - L8star and Zanco are relevant brand names
yes but porn
Unlockable bootloader, removable battery, headphone jack, being assembled with SCREWS rather than GLUE.
wait phones have non-unlockable bootloaders? I’ve never seen that before although you do have to do some annoying stuff on some to unlock them which isn’t necessary
Plenty of phones have unlockable bootloaders and it used to be pretty much an expected thing on Android phones until manufacturers and carriers started locking it down and being more Apple-like. You can’t run most custom ROMs without an unlocked bootloader as being able to run a custom kernel requires an unlocked bootloader. Being able to use non-Android Linux operating systems like postmarketOS also depend on unlocked bootloaders.
On most it’s just a matter of toggling an option in developer settings and using fastboot to unlock. Some make it more difficult than that, others completely prevent unlocking (and thus become e-waste after the official software stops getting updated).
Love the first answer as, I have to get on my Linux soapbox here.
I remember first using Linux (Ubuntu 9.10 for those curious). One of the big ideas behind it was ‘its your computer, do what you want’. That’s why you can have access to Root or the Super User. Since its open source, root can do what it wants.
Android was initially built on Linux, but they have taken Root and turned it into a way to restrict users not just from sensitive things (like necessary system apps), but also from bloatware (looking at you Samsung). Years ago I had a phone that came with the NFL Network which I didn’t want. Could I remove it? Of course not, I would have to be Root to do that!.
Sorry for the rant, but really, I should have access to anything on my phone if I want it. Give me a warning, make it so people can’t get to it ‘accidentally’, but then let it be on me.
This isn’t an Android thing. First-party Google phones can do this. This is on other Android OEMs.
You want to… own the phone you bought???
Shits me off that rooting the phone immediately blocks most banking apps.
After a few years of playing cat and mouse with the workarounds for safety net I finally said fuck it.
If they’re going to force me to live with an unrooted phone, I might as well have shit that works with the rest of my families eco-system and go iPhone.
To be fair, there still is quite a bit that can be done using ADB and no root, much more than you’ll ever get with iPhone.
But yeah, I agree my banking app is 100% of the reason I stopped rooting my phones.
Yeah, but I mostly did it for ad blocking.
I was able to strip ads out of games too, super effective.
iOS does everything else, and I still have an android tablet
Lucky Patcher strips ads without root.
Yeah, but that needs to patch each app.
Root level ad blocking was apply once
You can still buy Android phones that have manufacturer support for unlocking the bootloader. Once that’s done obtaining root is trivial. Pixel phones notably support this. Personally, I only buy phones I can unlock the bootloader on to show the demand for this feature. It doesn’t matter to me how great a phone is otherwise. Can’t unlock the bootloader? Not buying it.
That said, I completely agree with you. We all pay for and own the hardware, but let the manufacturer dictate what software it can run. That’s like buying a car and letting the car company tell you what roads you’re allowed to drive your car on. I don’t really blame the average use for not giving a crap because end users will never care about this stuff as long as their basic needs are met. It’s a failure of the people in the software industry to stand up for the open systems that built everything we have today. Without that constant fight for openness companies are going to be more than happy to take advantage of a locked down system to create a competitive advantage. Hell, look at what Google is currently doing with WEI in Chrome. If they have their way, the web will become just as locked down as smartphones are now.
Android was initially built on Linux
For the record, it still is.
Only problem is all the apps that won’t run in a rooted environment. I’m not sure why they should even know that information…
there’s some projects that exist that try their best to hide root from specified apps to make them seem as if they aren’t running in a rooted environment of course, they can’t completely hide all traces but most of the time they’re usually actively updated to make most apps seem as if they really aren’t running in a rooted environment
Spot on, my daily driver is a PinePhone Pro with keyboard case. It ticks all the boxes. It also covers the “physical keyboard” feature which is a few comments down.
It has its downsides, but it’s a full fledged Linux computer in my pocket. What’s not to love?
Many midrange phones still have headphone jacks, and removable battery has to come back if they want to continue selling in the EU.
Screws. Hell ya.
Fair phone seems to be doing it… except their last phone removed headphone jacks and introduced “fair ear buds” or some such… even the open company wants to increase sales.
Yeah that’s why I have the fairphone 3, also the 4 is REALLY expensive. And fairphone isn’t really an open company but more open than others
Sony phones still do the bootloader and headphone jacks at least. I’m pretty happy with mine.
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This app is not available for your device
On a Samsung.
Rear mounted fingerprint sensor 3.5mm Audio port
I refuse to use a phone without a headphone jack.
Why? Use adapters; there are some that you can use to charge and use at the same time. Look for a phone with 2 USB-C ports, or use Bluetooth like a normal person.
A 3.5mm Jack is not that much of a pain to put into a phone and having to have dongles on you at all times is just dumb. I’m a pixel 3 user and I loathe that I have to scramble around the house trying to find where my other half or I have left one of two dongles around just so I can listen to music outside of the house.
Leave it connected to your headphones
If these phones had 2 usb c ports then you could leave one on it always
I do, but my partner has a 3.5mm Jack so when she uses them they get removed. And also when I use them on any other device like gaming handhelds and my work laptop, I’m not using an adaptor for them.
Never been a fan of rear fingerprint scanners, always make unlocking a phone one handed when it’s on a desk at work or whatever so much more annoying.
I mostly used the Xperia Z line until the pixel 3. And at the time when I was looking for a replacement to my Z5 which had a power button scanner on the side. Nobody, not even Sony at the time were doing them since they buckled to then start mostly copying samsungs design language. And now that phone companies have finally realised how good a power button scanner can be I’m stuck with the pixel 3 haha. I bet by the time I need to replace this some other feature in phones I love will be mostly absent, knowing my luck.
Screen scanners seem much more sensitive to dry and callused fingers than dedicated finger print scanners of old. Some can’t even use it because their skin texture isn’t picking it up well, or have to do things like lick their finger before using which is gross. I miss the power button scanners or rear ones.
I’m not a fan of screen ones either, I prefer the ones on the side that are a part of the power button
There are still lots of phones like that… Is this considered discontinued?
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.
I don’t understand that argument, power banks are widely accessible nowadays, you can charge your phone without downtime, also can’t imagine charging this additional battery, like shutting the phone down jest to charge the second one? I’m all for user replaceable batteries tho in case of battery degradation and prolonging device’s life
While true, my personal gripe is when the main battery goes to shit. It’s nice to be able to swap it out and get another 3-4 years out of it
At that point you are using outdated tech
That’s not the point. Everyone has their reasoning for prolonging the lifespan of their equipment, outdated or not. This mindset of disposable gadgets needs to end.
I prefer newest tech
Good for you, not everyone can afford to upgrade their stuff every two years
Thats a choice. Anyone can make money. Sell your old stuff
The only phone I had to even consider changing the battery was a Windows phone in 2015 and the replacement battery was the same age (and degraded state) as the old one. I don’t get the need for quickly swappable batteries.
The real key to making this work properly is standardized battery sizes. You know, like the AA and AAA standards we’ve had for one hundred years.
“Real” batteries would be too big because they need casing. Phone batteries on the other hand are fragile, because: no casing.
As I said, there’s no need for quick-change batteries like in an xbox controller, because most people can go years on a single one.
But a self-service battery change when it’s ruined should be a thing. Preferably without glued-in parts.
I used to carry a backup battery so if I was away from a charger camping or so ething I could just pop a fresh battery in
The next administration will just revoke it
Not really how the EU works.
Every president does it
What are you talking about? The EU doesn’t have a president.
deleted by creator
Go back to Reddit troll.
Samsung does produce the xcover series for construction/industrial use. I seriously considered one, the issue was it would have been a downgrade for me in CPU, display and doesn’t have dex
Just curious, what situations do you find yourself in relatively frequently that a hot swappable batter would be more convenient?
Nowadays w/ 15 SOT I don’t think I’ve actually needed one minus camping where I don’t really use my phone much anyways.
Being able to rip the battery out when the phone locks up
How often does your phone lock up that that’s necessary? I used to have lockups a lot more but android is damn stable now, haven’t had one in years.
Needing to make sure it’s actually off and can’t be remotely powered on
Do you disconnect your PC’s PSU?
When it’s 3 years old and the hardware is still well up to the task but the battery lasts 4 hours.
Fair, but if you’re getting 4 hours SOT after 3 years, it’s just not a great phone. My current Note 10+ still pumping out 10 hours SOT and I’m a HEAVY user.
Honestly in 2015 I’m totally on your side for this, but in the last few years I’ve never felt the need to hotswap batteries, and only slightly felt the need to replace it in general.
User-replaceable batteries.
They’re coming back!
Maybe a better term is field-replaceable batteries. It’s great for the longevity of a device to be able to install a new battery in a few minutes with just a screwdriver, but I miss the earlier days of cell phones where you could keep a spare battery in your bag while out and about and swap it out with the dead battery in your phone in just a couple seconds.
If you have a Fairphone that’s still the case
Fairphone being locked to /e/ to keep warranty in the US is a big detractor for a lot of the types of people that would want one.
I didn’t know this, and am disappointed.
Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro gang!
