I went through my late teens as the initial smart phone boom was happening. I had a Motorola q that could get TV channels and had a keyboard. I had the enV that flipped open. And many androids/blackberries that I loved for their unique form factor and functionality.
I have never balked at spending money on a phone and for a long time i felt locked into generic flagship devices. With the debut of folding screens I feel like my appetite for unique devices rekindled. I think the power of android lies in its diversity of implementation.
So what features and functionalities would you choose over the next flagship release?
There are some niche phones with a thermal camera, would love to see more of that. Thermal modules are getting smaller, cheaper and better all the time and the main producers like infiray or guide are offering modules that seem to be clearly targeted at the smartphone market.
I’m still discovering new uses for my thermal camera and I wish I could have it in my pocket all the time. The obvious uses are finding gaps in your house’s thermal insulation or finding devices that draw a lot of standby energy. But you can also use it to find studs in your walls, find things that have recently been used, like cars in a parking lot or chairs in an office.
Yeah I still have my Pixel 4a as the secondary device and I can actually fit it in my front pocket on one of my sweatshirts with a little zipper. End of life is August though, so I don’t know what I’m going to replace it with
I’ll keep using it probably for a year or whatever but eventually I’ll need to replace it and it’s just hard to find anything that smaller light. Maybe by then the Motorola razr will be cheaper on the resale market or something.
I want a Galaxy Fold style phone, but the external screen is eInk. Have it set to always show the book I am reading. This will let me read in bite sized pieces.
That would be awesome, although it might make the camera experience worse since you usually use the camera folded. I saw a prototype for a phone a while back that had a regular screen on one side and e-ink on the other, I always thought that was cool.
E-Ink would be nice, whether integrated as part of an OLED/LCD screen, or a separate module that goes over the top.
Most of the things that I use my phone for don’t generally need the full colour display (text isn’t that expensive to display), and I wouldn’t mind trading that for vastly better battery life that you can get from e-ink, but having the option to use both is probably the best way to go.
An IR transceiver wouldn’t go poorly either. It’s not something I use much, but it was handy to have when I did, whether to send things around, or to just use my phone as a remote for televisions and things.
Whenever I buy a phone there’s two function I look for that is getting phased out: LED indicator and a 3.5mm audio jack. It’s why I have a Sony Xperia. The thing is there’s no user configuration for the LED indicator. You either need to pay for a third party app or unlock the bootloader and install a custom firmware. I would love if a flagship phone had an LED Indicstor that was customizable. i.e. Blue for a text, Red for an email, Green for battery at 80%+, etc.
I was actually writing up a big thing about how I’d gone out of my way to get a used Note 9 with the headphone jack, which also has the LED indicator, and how you could set the LED colors for individual apps. But after spending about 20 minutes Googling and looking for the settings in my phone, I’m not sure it’s actually possible. Maybe it was my Note 8 that had LED indicator options? Or maybe I just imagined it entirely. Hmm
I think the galaxy s9 was the last that had that for the galaxy seriesm. When I got my S20U I handed my s8plus? The flagship to my mum. I still miss the notification light and it’s such a shame that we can’t even use the AMOLED screen to emulate the notification light.
Native Bluetooth GPS support. I do mapping for OpenStreetMap a lot and the built in GPS modules are just too bad for that. Currently I have to use an app to get my Bluetooth GPS connected. But sometimes this app fails and the built in GPS takes over and ruins my logs.
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There are some niche phones with a thermal camera, would love to see more of that. Thermal modules are getting smaller, cheaper and better all the time and the main producers like infiray or guide are offering modules that seem to be clearly targeted at the smartphone market.
I’m still discovering new uses for my thermal camera and I wish I could have it in my pocket all the time. The obvious uses are finding gaps in your house’s thermal insulation or finding devices that draw a lot of standby energy. But you can also use it to find studs in your walls, find things that have recently been used, like cars in a parking lot or chairs in an office.
Thermal cameras are also really handy for electronics repair and spotting invisible water leaks in ceilings.
I enjoyed the squeeze to activate assistant on Pixel 2 XL…just felt right. I even configured it to activate flashlight when I needed a quick light.
@Rdan33l DAB Tuner!
Better system font/typeface selection and a way to install new ones. I know it’s a petty gripe, but the default android options are few and terrible.
I want a phone small enough to fit in my pocket with the pocket flap buttoned shut
Yeah I still have my Pixel 4a as the secondary device and I can actually fit it in my front pocket on one of my sweatshirts with a little zipper. End of life is August though, so I don’t know what I’m going to replace it with
I’ll keep using it probably for a year or whatever but eventually I’ll need to replace it and it’s just hard to find anything that smaller light. Maybe by then the Motorola razr will be cheaper on the resale market or something.
I want a Galaxy Fold style phone, but the external screen is eInk. Have it set to always show the book I am reading. This will let me read in bite sized pieces.
That would be awesome, although it might make the camera experience worse since you usually use the camera folded. I saw a prototype for a phone a while back that had a regular screen on one side and e-ink on the other, I always thought that was cool.
E-Ink would be nice, whether integrated as part of an OLED/LCD screen, or a separate module that goes over the top.
Most of the things that I use my phone for don’t generally need the full colour display (text isn’t that expensive to display), and I wouldn’t mind trading that for vastly better battery life that you can get from e-ink, but having the option to use both is probably the best way to go.
An IR transceiver wouldn’t go poorly either. It’s not something I use much, but it was handy to have when I did, whether to send things around, or to just use my phone as a remote for televisions and things.
Something interesting. Like 2 USB-C ports, also a nice hard plastic back, since they are so hard to find now.
deleted by creator
Yeah, I knew about that one, it’s too gamer-y for me though.
@MargotRobbie @[email protected] yeah that’s fair, you could just be gamer-girl Barbie and lean into it 😅
p.s. my lemmy instance is being slow to federate so using mastodon instead.
Whenever I buy a phone there’s two function I look for that is getting phased out: LED indicator and a 3.5mm audio jack. It’s why I have a Sony Xperia. The thing is there’s no user configuration for the LED indicator. You either need to pay for a third party app or unlock the bootloader and install a custom firmware. I would love if a flagship phone had an LED Indicstor that was customizable. i.e. Blue for a text, Red for an email, Green for battery at 80%+, etc.
I feel like OLED screens partly replace this, since they could have a small indicator on the screen without needing to power a backlight etc
I was actually writing up a big thing about how I’d gone out of my way to get a used Note 9 with the headphone jack, which also has the LED indicator, and how you could set the LED colors for individual apps. But after spending about 20 minutes Googling and looking for the settings in my phone, I’m not sure it’s actually possible. Maybe it was my Note 8 that had LED indicator options? Or maybe I just imagined it entirely. Hmm
I miss having a notification LED. It used to be super common to have a “breathing” effect with a given color when an app had sent a notification.
So a Snapchat for example would show the breathing as yellow, etc. Super convenient to check for messages without going and grabbing the phone.
I think the galaxy s9 was the last that had that for the galaxy seriesm. When I got my S20U I handed my s8plus? The flagship to my mum. I still miss the notification light and it’s such a shame that we can’t even use the AMOLED screen to emulate the notification light.
Yea I only ever had this on a Samsung S9 and I did find it helpful. Snapchat as you said did a good job using it.
Officially supported rooting! Makes this less complicated.
Hackability
Native Bluetooth GPS support. I do mapping for OpenStreetMap a lot and the built in GPS modules are just too bad for that. Currently I have to use an app to get my Bluetooth GPS connected. But sometimes this app fails and the built in GPS takes over and ruins my logs.
Ability to use the screen as a display through the USB port so I can debug a lot of my systems at home without needing to carry a monitor around.
sounds like more of a software feature
Actually I doubt it, video in and video out likely needs totally different wiring, so most phones probably couldn’t do it without hardware changes
being able to run scrcpy easily over wifi