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.

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.

I'd forgotten all about the notification LED. I wonder, could you flash a small part of an OLED display to achieve something similar while still being low power?

At this time, the 3.5mm jack is top with 27%

Ability to automatically turn wifi on and off with screen.

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:

• Too thin
• Cameras slightly below other flagships
• No S Pen support, because they wanted to make it thinner
• Bad water resistance
• Awful battery size and life
• Overall, one of the more underpowered and under spec'd foldable on the global market - all because they wanted to be thin

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

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.

There used to be a one-click root option in older phones (I don't remember which one)

Everybody misses their IR blaster it seems. And why not? randomly turning off the neighbors TV is good wholesome fun.

My first phone could play terrestrial radio. I miss that.

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

Restriction of Network access per app

Open Bootloaders, 3.5mm jacks, SD Card readers.

Physical keyboard

I might be the only one, but KEYBOARDS!

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

Built in IR blaster

Openness

Samsung had a little pressure sensitive area at the bottom of phone screens in the S9 era. It was handy and I had it set up like a hidden home button.

The S9 also had a variable aperture camera, which I feel like could have been developed a lot more.

I also miss notification LEDs. Sure, AOD mostly replaces it, but it was fun setting different colors for people, situations, etc

The Essential phone had a ceramic back that was very comfortable and cool in the hand. Though it was slippery. Another idea that could have been developed further.

The different back materials on the Moto X were very satisfying. The customization of that phone was unmatched!

A keyboard.

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.

mass storage mode

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