I liked the little led light at the top that would blink for notification
I don't remember which phone, but one of mine had an rgb led that could be set to blink different colors for different apps. I really miss that!
The core apps (like messaging, and calendar) being free software and open source.
no headphone jack is shitty but god i fucking loathe typing on a touchscreen keyboard
Control over it.
it is mindboggling how having root access is treated like an illegal thing to do, rather than the default. the phone should have the root password in the documentation you get in the box.
does the average user needs root? probably not.
however, it's a piece of hardware you legally own, you should have access to it.
it's like buying a car and not being allowed to open the bonnet and checking the oil voids the warranty.
Unimpeded root. You can still get it on maybe a handful of phones but apps are getting harder and harder to run with it enabled.
I just want the LG G5 back. It had a(n):
And a ton of other stuff. Truly the best android phone ever made
Closest I can find now is the Ulefone line (no removable battery) but I have no idea if they're decent phones or not.
IR transmitters
Miracast (in base open source Android, especially access to the ability to receive)
Scrolling notification text in the notification bar (seriously, that was sooooo much better than the obnoxious new default pop-up notifications)
A bunch of permissions that's been too locked down (stuff used by Tasker, networking tools, etc)
There's an IR blaster on my OnePlus Open and the casual ease of fixing a display TV where the remote wasn't working was divine
Being able to take out the battery so that I can swap it with a pre-charged one. Those were great times. Then you can just throw the nearly-dead one on the charger.
This is identical to having the super power of being able to restart your phone to get a full battery charge.
Even just being able to easily replace it with a new one was nice.
Replaceable battery
AUX plug
Expandable storage by SD card
Did I say replaceable battery already?
Edit: oh and non-edged screens (the roundings on the side, don't know the official name... But it sucks and almost all flagship phones have them, or at least when I bought mine 3 years ago, don't know about now tbh)
Don't forget about the IR blaster.
Most useful gimmick on a phone ever. I never had to deal with an annoying TV in public throughout most of the 2010s. It was nice; it was one of my most-used features and I miss it dearly.
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.
Replaceable battery. No contest.
finger print scanner being on the back of the phone not under the screen. and headphone jack
Non-pastel colors. My phone used to be fire orange on black and i loved it!
Really just personalization in general.
The feature where you can hold the phone comfortably in one hand and without having to do any gymnastics to reach the top corner.
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.
Physical keyboards, easily removable backs and batteries
The triangle / circle / square (or back / home / app tray) navigation system.
I've had to re-enable it on my last phones because they come with the much less usable new gesture navigation, and I dread the day it's not an option anymore.
The classic app drawer.
If I wanted an iPhone (with their cluttered, unusable, and extremely user hostile design) I'd get an iPhone.
I don't want my screen cluttered with random icons, I want multiple sliding screens with widgets for the apps I need to be able to check at a glance, with a row of quick access apps / app folders at the bottom (slidable and hidable if possible), with an icon to access the list of less used apps on the top right, where it used to be back when android was useable instead of a cheap iOS clone.
Luckily third party launchers are still a thing.
headphone jack mostly because it was the most consumer unfriendly decision removed purely to make phone companies more money
I need my expandable 1TB SD Card storage. 128 default is lame
I want to have 10 TV shows, 50 movies, a offline wikipedia .zim file, bunch of photos, etc...
I don't want my phone to just be a phone, I want it to be a Pocket PC.
GIMME THE FUCKING SD CARD SLOT 😭
Root. No root means its never gonna be my device. I want more buttons back as well.
I liked the notification LEDs that some of the nexus phones used to have, you could customize the color / flashing pattern per contact.
physical home button row.
give me those clickety clicks, i hate accidentally hitting back/home/whatever, whenever I'm typing or scrolling
Definitely the jack. I have special headphones for listening to white noise while sleeping. The Bluetooth version have a chunky panel, and don't last long before they get that Bluetooth whine. That whine is a deal-breaker is a sleep aid.
So I use the 3.5mm version.... if I use the charge port converted to a Jack, I can't charge my phone while I listen to white noise and I'll wake up to 6%. Rhe loss or the jack is why I haven't upgraded my phone in years.
don't be evil.
A physical, landscape mode, QWERTY keyboard. FAHAHAHAHUCK typing on a touch screen.
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.
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: 
Gimmick features in general. So many android phones are just designed to be android flavors of an iPhone, removing all the character that used to be one of the benefits of not going with Apple.
I had a phone that had a built in kickstand. It was both useful for propping the phone up and as a fidget toy. My last phone had a camera that would pop up out of the top of the phone so they could put a better camera for the selfie cam while also not having a hole in the screen.
Stereo front facing speakers.
I have no idea why these terrible downward facing speakers took off, HTC had it nailed in 2012. RIP, king of smartphones. I'm glad to at least have 2 proper speakers on my Fold6 and 7, rather than an amplified earpiece speaker... But this is just not how sound works. I shouldn't have to cup my hand around the side to point the sound in the proper direction.
I really wish IR blasters would come back into style. They're not even expensive to manufacture, and they're small enough that they can be incorporated into any modern smartphone design pretty easily. And almost everybody with a smartphone has SOMETHING in their home that they control with an IR remote. There's basically no reason to have stopped including them.
That's probably my top 4. Easily swappable battery I can do without, but able to replaced with basic tools would be nice (like a screwdriver, not a specialist kit that involves regluing the damn thing).
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.
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.
IR Blaster, Headphone Jack, swappable battery.
Ultimately...
Less thin, I hate this constant race to be the thinnest phone - lighter I would maybe be for - but thinner, fuck off.
Why I didn't buy a Fold7 recently:
Ability to automatically turn wifi on and off with screen.
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