Your smartphone feature wishlist – Which features do you wish smatphones had?

[Ertio]

Let me start with mine:

• User-replaceable battery. Let's get the obvious one out of the way. This would eliminate dependence on external repair services and eliminate the need for slow and careful charging. Just blast the power in, charge to 100% guilt-free, and then replace it carelessly and cheaply when it stops working. Batteries are meant to be replaced like car oil. It is basic maintenance, as Louis Rossmann said (video).
• Dedicated Micro-HDMI port. This allows for presentations while charging is possible at the same time, without bulky adapters that also slow down charging.
• Full-sized SD card slot. Can add up to 2 TB, and has a write-protection switch unlike MicroSD. Worries about running out of space will be a thing of the past. Memory cards also protect against data loss since they can be retrieved if the phone breaks (example, with auto-translatable subtitles) or is remotely disabled because the phone vendor feels like it (Louis Rossmann video). Not implementing this amazing technology in mobile phones would be a wasted opportunity. It was made specifically for portable devices, so it should be implemented.
• Separate high frame rate and slow motion options. Some smartphones (currently Xiaomi and Apple, formerly Samsung) store videos recorded at a high frame rate in real-time, some slow (currently Samsung) down the file they create. I prefer the real-time one for editing purposes and versatility (can be treated as ordinary real-time video), but I also acknowledge that the slowed-down file has the possible benefit of being played as slow-motion by default on every device, which is desirable to some users (example). So both options need to be available.
• Start the camera in horizontal orientation by default. On some smartphones, taking a picture or starting a video recording too soon after the camera software launched will result in misrotation. This could also be fixed by saving the video file horizontally if the phone was held horizontally for the majority of the time, not just at the beginning.
• Dedicated camera shutter button. With customizable shortcuts like "double-press to start recording video as soon as possible (horizontally of course!)".
• Notification LEDs and real proximity sensors. These have been removed in recent years in favour of a bezel-less design. I don't mind a small bezel for these benefits. I don't really need a bezel-less design; I was satisfied prior to it. The bezel size of, for example, the Note 3, was fine to me. It seems people started started being unhappy with their current phone designs as soon as Justin Denison told them so on Unpacked 2017 for the S8 (video, at 17 minutes, 32 seconds). However, the small S8 bezels could still fit a proximity sensor and a notification LED. Now, we have completely bezel-less phones so there is no space for that anymore. The front-facing sensors and LEDs had to go.
• 8K 4320p at 60fps. But that is going to come soon anyway, and (hopefully) eventually cascade from the flagship phones down to the affordable phones. Strangely, the transition between 2160p 30fps and 2160p 60fps on smartphones took four years, between 2013 (Galaxy Note 3) and 2017 (iPhone 8), much longer than the two years between 1080p 30fps (S2, 2011) and 1080p 60fps (Note 3, 2013). We saw the first 8K video cameras in phones in 2020. 2024 is over and the 8K 60fps smartphone cameras aren't a thing yet.
• Temperature and humidity sensors. As far as I know, those only existed on the S4 and Note 3. I am sure people will find uses for those, for example a smartphone can be repurposed as a remote thermometer or weather station in a remote location. Not that essential, but a neat extra.
• Floating touch. Also known as self-capacitive touch screens. This allows detecting a hovering finger over the touch screen and allows for previews and tooltips on websites and various software such as the seek bar on video players. These existed only on the Sony Xperia Sola (details), Samsung Galaxy S4, Note 3, and S5. Interacting with the phone without touching it seemed so futuristic and impressive back in the day, but little did we know, it would not even take two years for Samsung to get rid of it again.
• Bootloader unlockable without delay. This is necessary for getting root access, in other words, true ownership.

Now, let's hear yours.

But please be realistic. No "transform into an airplane" type of stuff like in that iPhone 4 vs. HTC Evo video (at 1 minute, 7 seconds).

 

[I hereby release this post into the public domain, as described in CC0 1.0. You can copy and paste it wherever you like without asking me.]

Edited 57 minutes ago by Ertio
added temperature sensor, humidity sensor, floating touch, bootloader unlocking

[porina]

Optical zoom camera equivalent to 30x with optical stabilisation at high quality 4k60 video output. This might stretch the laws of physics a bit to not give it a power bulge. The sensor shouldn't be too big a problem, but the optics could be. I'd settle for a stepped zoom not continuous if that helps.

[saintlouisbagels]

I really missed having the flashing notification LED when I switched over to iPhone back in 2016.

That's really sad that they've been phased out in recent years.

[Drvulcanlord]

1. SD Card Slot
2. Headphone jack
3. Good Camera
4. Replaceable battery
5. LoRa built in
6. programmable button
7. no camera bump.
8. sacrifice wireless charging for all metal construction

Even though I have what are considered large hands, I tend to like smaller phones so preferably this would all be in a iphone mini sized package.

 

And lastly the most unrealistic feature on the whole list: it runs on side loadable ios  

 

[Ertio]

  1 hour ago, Drvulcanlord said:

LoRa built in

And people should be able to send peer-to-peer PictoChats like on the Nintendo DS using it!

[Drvulcanlord]

  1 hour ago, Ertio said:

And people should be able to send peer-to-peer PictoChats like on the Nintendo DS using it!

That would be so Cool!

[TempestCatto]

Bezels to avoid hole punch or notch. Physical home button with fingerprint sensor. 3.5mm headphone jack. Under $500 max price. OS, security, and app support for 5 years minimum. Also no ai bullshit.

[OhioYJ]

1. Unlockable Bootloader - this can solve the OS update issues.

2. Headphone Jack.

3. Flat screen, can we stop with curved edges, these suck for screen protectors.

4. SD card slot.

 

What I don't need:

8k, 240hz screens, other battery eating stuff. It's a phone. It needs a decent camera, that doesn't mean 100 megapixels, they are getting ridiculous. All this unnecessary stuff is just making devices more expensive. 

[emosun]

1. Fixable

2. Battery 2-3 times the size

3. Turn off updates

4. Everything unlocked

[KodokuJ]

  2 hours ago, Ertio said:

Let me start with mine:

• User-replaceable battery. Let's get the obvious one out of the way. This would eliminate dependence on external repair services and eliminate the need for slow and careful charging. Just blast the power in, charge to 100% guilt-free, and then replace it carelessly and cheaply when it stops working. Batteries are meant to be replaced like car oil. It is basic maintenance, as Louis Rossmann said (video).
• Dedicated Micro-HDMI port. This allows for presentations while charging is possible at the same time, without bulky adapters that also slow down charging.
• Full-sized SD card slot. Can add up to 2 TB, and has a write-protection switch unlike MicroSD. Worries about running out of space will be a thing of the past. Memory cards also protect against data loss since they can be retrieved if the phone breaks (example, with auto-translatable subtitles) or is remotely disabled because the phone vendor feels like it (Louis Rossmann video). Not implementing this amazing technology in mobile phones would be a wasted opportunity. It was made specifically for portable devices, so it should be implemented.
• Separate high frame rate and slow motion options. Some smartphones (currently Xiaomi and Apple, formerly Samsung) store videos recorded at a high frame rate in real-time, some slow (currently Samsung) down the file they create. I prefer the real-time one for editing purposes and versatility (can be treated as ordinary real-time video), but I also acknowledge that the slowed-down file has the possible benefit of being played as slow-motion by default on every device, which is desirable to some users (example). So both options need to be available.
• Start the camera in horizontal orientation by default. On some smartphones, taking a picture or starting a video recording too soon after the camera software launched will result in misrotation. This could also be fixed by saving the video file horizontally if the phone was held horizontally for the majority of the time, not just at the beginning.
• Dedicated camera shutter button. With customizable shortcuts like "double-press to start recording video as soon as possible (horizontally of course!)".
• Notification LEDs and real proximity sensors. These have been removed in recent years in favour of a bezel-less design. I don't mind a small bezel for these benefits. I don't really need a bezel-less design; I was satisfied prior to it. The bezel size of, for example, the Note 3, was fine to me. It seems people started started being unhappy with their current phone designs as soon as Justin Denison told them so on Unpacked 2017 for the S8 (video, at 17 minutes, 32 seconds). However, the small S8 bezels could still fit a proximity sensor and a notification LED. Now, we have completely bezel-less phones so there is no space for that anymore. The front-facing sensors and LEDs had to go.
• 8K 4320p at 60fps. But that is going to come soon anyway, and (hopefully) eventually cascade from the flagship phones down to the affordable phones. Strangely, the transition between 2160p 30fps and 2160p 60fps on smartphones took four years, between 2013 (Galaxy Note 3) and 2017 (iPhone 8), much longer than the two years between 1080p 30fps (S2, 2011) and 1080p 60fps (Note 3, 2013). We saw the first 8K video cameras in phones in 2020. 2024 is over and the 8K 60fps smartphone cameras aren't a thing yet.
• Temperature and humidity sensors. As far as I know, those only existed on the S4 and Note 3. I am sure people will find uses for those, for example a smartphone can be repurposed as a remote thermometer or weather station in a remote location. Not that essential, but a neat extra.
• Floating touch. Also known as self-capacitive touch screens. This allows detecting a hovering finger over the touch screen and allows for previews and tooltips on websites and various software such as the seek bar on video players. These existed only on the Sony Xperia Sola (details), Samsung Galaxy S4, Note 3, and S5. Interacting with the phone without touching it seemed so futuristic and impressive back in the day, but little did we know, it would not even take two years for Samsung to get rid of it again.
• Bootloader unlockable without delay. This is necessary for getting root access, in other words, true ownership.

Now, let's hear yours.

But please be realistic. No "transform into an airplane" type of stuff like in that iPhone 4 vs. HTC Evo video (at 1 minute, 7 seconds).

 

[I hereby release this post into the public domain, as described in CC0 1.0. You can copy and paste it wherever you like without asking me.]

Expand  

I’m basic as hell. I just want touch-id and I actually like the iPhone X-12 notch more then the 13-14 one or the Dynamic Island. The iPhone X camera is my favorite one they’ve made visually.

So basically an iPhone XS which I have now LOL