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?
An open bootloader and a removable battery.
Larger, swappable battery. Squeeze for assistant
+1 for the battery. I turned off squeeze for assistant when I had it, lol. It kept going off by accident.
- Removable battery
- Ambidextrous button placement
- Screws instead of glue where possible
- USB4 + desktop mode
I know some phones had already did this, but I always liked the idea of support for using your phone as a TV remote. The phone has replaced so many pieces of hardware that it feels silly that TV remotes haven’t been replaced yet.
I also specifically wish Chrome supported extensions on mobile. Firefox does it. Why can’t the biggest browser do it?
I miss the innovation of early 2010s phones. Using the IR blaster to mess around with bar TVs was a ton of fun. Not to mention headphone jacks, SD card slots, and removable batteries.
I wish Firefox mobile supported desktop extensions. I know its doable with Nightly builds, but that’s a pain to set up.
Through wifi. They used to have IR blasters that work just like the real remote
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.
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.
Basically an Asus Zenfone 9 with a removable battery and an Sd card. Also, make the front like Sony phones - larger bezels on the top and the bottom of the display and house stereo speakers and front camera there instead of a cutout.
HEADPHONE JACK.
GIVE ME THE GOD DAMN HEADPHONE JACK BACK
It’s the rear fingerprint reader for me, I use the pulldown action constantly. That and stereo front-facing speakers.
OMG great question! I want:
- Laser range finder/“tape” measure
- Thermal camera
- Air quality sensor
- Radiation detector/Geiger counter
- Multimeter capabilities
- IR LED (so I can use it as a remote)
- Ultrasound capabilities
- Peltier so I can put a drink on my phone to chill it down 👍
An unlocked bootloader and a normal Linux distribution where I have root!
A Silent/Vibrate/Ring switch like on the OnePlus phones, headphone jack and a easily swappable battery.
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.
A swappable battery. I could buy a few batteries and never be out of power. I could replace the battery on an older phone without pretty much having to replace the phone itself.
Not really a feature of the phone, but a design theory. I want my small phone back. Not this “zenfone 9” size small. Like HTC One size small.
Make it bifold wallet sized, and ~1/2"thick.
These hugely tall phones where you can’t reach the top third if the screen without dropping the thing are just annoyingly huge. Then they make them so thin they can’t fit a big enough battery for a full day use.
Beyond that would like an under display fingerprint sensor. Rear and side mounted always have issues with cases for me, and make it more annoying when using the device while it’s on a desk.
A microsd card slot and a headphone jack
