Asklemmy

Keyboard and the ability to physically close the phone to turn it off/sleep/hangup.

I kinda miss flip phones? These days phones are too big for my hands and pockets. I find myself buying cheaper phones just so it's a little smaller.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 had a feature in the camera app which would take several pictures in a row and you could then choose the one with best quality. Extremely useful feature especially in low light. I'm sure there's an app out there that can do this but I can't find one.

Phones: ability to throw it on the ground without anything bad happening to it.

Other: software that you could just own.

I miss the kick stand that HTC phones had. Yeah I know there are phone cases with kick stands, but in my experience they don't work as well.

A tactile keyboard. There was a time when I could text with my eyes closed (literally). Now it takes me 30 seconds to "type" out a text that should take < 10 seconds.

Replaceable batteries.

I'm not sure exactly what it was called but any time you took a photo with a Note8, it was always taking photos from right before to right after the photo. This resulted in much fewer garbage photos because a few frames before or after the shutter was pressed would be a better photo, one that is not blurry! Now instead of a useless photo, I would have at least something workable. I have not seen that on any other phone with this feature, including my current one.

Predictive text like my Nokia's T9. It knew how English worked and what the probability of a word in context was.

Now it's all: "the same time and consideration and I are going to be a good time to get the latest Flash player is required for video playback is unavailable right now because this video is not available for remote playback is unavailable right now because this...."

Preinstalled snake.

Active Edge, which LG originally came up with and that Google adopted with the Pixel 2. Of course they dropped it after a few devices.

It was basically a button/key press that you could configure to trigger actions by firmly applying pressure with you hands around the lower third of your phone. It gave a very satisfying haptic vibration response based on the amount of pressure you applied and you could even set the amount of pressure until it was triggered. It had something magickal about it.

If you're interested in the tech: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/10/19/google-pixel-2-teardown-ifixit/

I had an old flip phone that came with a demo of Uno. I could play a single hand, then reset the demo and play again and again. There was only a nag screen when you were exiting/restarting the demo, and not a single other ad.

Passed hours with that little game.

I miss mobile gaming when it was like that.

Notifications that don't take up a big chunk of your screen.

I remember when notifications were just little icons at the top of the screen that represented the app, not three or four lines of text, or a picture, that let everyone nearby know what it's about.

I've had times in the past where I've been playing with my kid on the phone, or reading a book or something, and a friend will message me something inappropriate. It opens on the top of my screen before I can do anything about it, and for no reason. I have to open the app anyway to see the full message.

The Snake game you could play on push button phones. Oh my goodness.

Dunno if this counts, but screens that fit in my goddamn pocket.

IR blaster in my phone.

The OnePlus 7 Pro and 7T Pro had a pop-up front-facing camera. No notch, no pinhole, no buttons at the bottom to mar the perfect full screen. It was gorgeous. My (tragically bricked due to my own water-based stupidity) OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren is probably my favorite phone I ever used.

Sharing contact information directly phone to phone.

Lock screen widgets, giving me information at an actual glance without the risk of getting sucked into other random bullshit.

The knock code really was so convenient and safe. No way for other people to see it.

I was an avid fan of LG phones, especially the G series. I mean yeah, some features were kind of pointless (G5 Module??)

Normal(small) size.

Sticking with LG the little AOD app icon that would pop up when you get a notification on the V60. Forgot how much I missed it.