Android

Openness

I really miss USB Mass Storage mode. Back then you could plug in your phone into your computer and it would just expose the internal storage and SD card as standard usb storage devices. Nowadays you have shitty MTP which works barely if ever, so you're forced to use either internet or ADB for syncing files. Old way was better.

IIRC you can still enable it if you compile your own kernel but I wish more ROMs shipped with this feature by default.

A keyboard.

Blackberry Priv form factor:

The keypad doubled kinda like a touch pad as well. I could use keyboard shortcuts, typed way faster tha touch. All that without compramising screen space.

About a month ago I lost outlined text. Currently I can only do highlighted text, which looks awful everywhere. I can't believe I need to post this in 2025:

USB mass storage mode. Some Android phones can’t do it anymore. I always thought the ability to select a disk image your phone would offer up to a of to boot off of was the coolest feature one of the things that made this iPhone user envious but it’s becoming less common for such a feature to still work in Android.

A physical, landscape mode, QWERTY keyboard. FAHAHAHAHUCK typing on a touch screen.

Physical keyboards, easily removable backs and batteries

Being smaller than a phablet in 2010s. Bring back 4 inch phones for fuck's sake. You can price them at the same level as your gigantic six-inchers, I'll happily pay for it as long as the insides of the phone are premium otherwise. I should know that my phone is in my pocket by putting my hands on it, not because it's sticking out or making it impossible to sit down.

A 4" Pixel 9 Micro running GrapheneOS. I'd pay a thousand euros right now if such a thing existed.

But of course they have fucked up the UX of the operating system in such a way that a regular-sized phone like that cannot be practically used anymore. Oh well.

mass storage mode

Software festure, but I miss being able to turn on and off wifi and Bluetooth in the drop-down menu with one click. Latest android replaced it with another sub menu to select network or device, requiring another action to enable/disable.

Sub 5" screen, 3.5mm jack, removable battery, 2-stage camera shutter button.

My old Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact had all of those, except for the removable battery.

Notification led that is separate from the display. Custom per-app colour and blink pattern.

I had a Google pixel 3a which had squeeze sensors, with lineageOS I had it assigned to my flashlight which was super handy. Also I enjoyed the heart-rate sensor on my GS5. Also really liked the DAC in my LGV20.

Removable battery is #1. My old Galaxy S3 (not even my first phone-yes I'm old) has absolutely godawful battery life but I had I think 4 total batteries around to make sure I could always have it even on a heavy use day. That sucked, but at least it was doable with a really easy process (peel off plastic back, pull out and swap battery, snap the backplate back on).

I keep an old phone around and sometimes use it to play like a video for my cats to watch if they're laying on my bed when I'm not in there. But it has to stay plugged in because it loses the first 20% in about 15 minutes.

And that phone in particular (a pixel 2) is particularly a pain to replace the battery in the first place.

I miss the days when everything wasn't glued together. The biggest hurdle to battery replacement or screen replacement is all that damn glue.

At this point I am team "use phones less, use Linux PCs more" unless I am away from home.

I'm just chilling on my couch with my family. Having a nice ergo trackball and a monitor on an arm that can swing out in front of me is a game changer.

My HTC ChaCha had a full qwerty keyboard. Now I'm lucky if the on-screen one bothers to show up in some apps.

I might be the only one, but KEYBOARDS!

I even designed my own keyboard attachment to get one back.

Screens without holes in them.

I'm a Xperia weirdo because the one I have still rocks a 3.5mm jack, expandable storage and a camera outside the screen. Not only are some of those gone from this year's equivalent, but it is 1500 bucks now, which is absurd. I went to a phone search engine and looked up that exact feature set and it turns out there are exactly zero phones that include those now.

I genuinely don't understand why people think the way to compete with Samsung is doing a worse version of their exact product. It's so dumb. Or maybe it's true and it's the people who are dumb. Because everybody says these things, but people seem to buy candybars with puncholes and no physical headphne support or expandable storage or IR blasters.

Wish it was ranked choice voting. For me the list is: removable battery, expandable storage, ir blaster, headphone jack. I think repairablity is the most important and i never use the headphone jack but do use ir sometimes so thats the only reason its last. On phones with oled screens notification light is a software feature and fm requires the headphone jack.

My Motorola Moto Z had a shake shake flashlight feature. Not sure if this was Android or Motorola but it was very useful.

physical home button row.

give me those clickety clicks, i hate accidentally hitting back/home/whatever, whenever I'm typing or scrolling

I bought a modern off brand with an audio jack and micro SD, because why would I spend 3 times more for less features?

3 way tie between 3.5mm jack, easily removable, and now that microSD Express is finally becoming mainstream, a microSD Express card slot. It'd be nice to see in a flagship or at least a Mediatek mid range chip like the dimensity 8400

Human coded Smart Keyboard. Ever since they changed to learning algorithms the spelling and grammar corrections have gotten much worse.

Physical keyboard

I miss controlling the volume on a per app basis. It gets unwieldy, but it was nice sometimes.

I know they dont all remove it, but man audio jack phones were awesome. My usbc adapter sucks and bluetooth is spotty and low res.