What's your least favourite thing about your smartphone

About 2.5 years ago I left behind Android and went to the Dark Side. Bought an iPhone. It was frustrating to use at first because changing OS is a pain in the ass, but I got used to it and actually really like it now.

But I still have two big complaints:

There ought to be some kind of icon in the toolbar to show me I have unread notifications. I miss this very much from Android, which would show icons for the apps that have notifications. The Apple Watch solves this by having a notification icon, but I shouldn’t need to buy a separate device for that functionality.

I cannot stand that I can only go back by swiping from the left side of the screen. On Android the swipe in gesture from either left or right side could be set up to be the “back” action. I understand why this is, Android developed with a dedicated back button and thus has an OS-level back command, whereas iOS is highly contextual and you flow through apps and menus differently than Android, and it has no dedicated universal “back,” so swiping in from the left is back and swiping in from the right is forward. It makes using a large screen one-handed unnecessarily difficult.

Making me feel like a freak for asking for the freaking sudo.

If you can't do any software change you want, you are not the owner of the device.

No removable battery.

• No good operating system preinstalled by default
• No headphone jack anymore

My fingerprint scanner was on the back, but now it's on the front, and can't identify me as regularly as it did before.

I've gotten used to the new location, but I can't forgive making it less accurate than it used to be.

the constant surveillance.

No fucking mini jack for headphones.

Motherfucking Bixby button.

The lack of a fucking headphone jack

Touchscreen basically being unusable in any kind of rain no matter how light

I'm relatively content with my Pixel 4A running LineageOS (with root), but that's an experience that's really only suited to very technical users, in large part because some apps actively resist running in an environment the device owner actually controls.

My complaint is with the smartphone ecosystem as a whole: it's designed to empower the OS vendor and app developers over users. The entire tech world (outside Microsoft and maybe some corporate IT types) saw Microsoft Palladium as a nightmare scenario a couple decades ago. Now we've let Apple and Google do the same thing with barely a grumble out of the mainstream tech press.

Missing status LED. I'd like to deactivate the always on screen feature.

Least favorite things? Hmmm...

Things that I want on my phone:

-headphone Jack

-user replaceable battery

-micro SD

-good camera

I know the specs would be terrible nowadays, but in terms of physical features and overall design, I think phone design peaked around the Samsung S5.

How much Google controls the software experience and locks it down.

Currently I wish I could run a local HTML/CSS/JS App on my browser (like you can easily do in any desktop OS) but I can't.

My least favorite thing is it is getting old and I can't find a good equivalent to the Pixel 4a to replace it with. They are all too big, have no headphone jack, and are too expensive for what I get out of them.

That it's 7 years old and I can't find a replacement that isn't a downgrade in functionality.

It's too big. I couldn't get a phone the same size as my old one without sacrificing the micro sd slot so I ended up with something bigger than ideal

I want a physical keyboard again. I cam't type on these damn tochscreen buttona. They're too small and i canct tell which keya i'm toiching.

The lack of basic things that used to be standard many years ago. Namely headphone jack and micro-SD card slot missing.

Google cutting off customization and generally being annoying and creepy. I know I can install some other OS on it, but at the same time I don't want to deal with Google's "play protect" thing.

Ever since smartphones exploded the expectation to respond IMMEDIATELY is out of control. Anyone who gets my number I warn them they'll be left on read for days if not weeks at a time. If it's important I'll respond but otherwise it's whenever I get time to decompress and respond. I've got a buddy who I love we respond to each other every other week mostly. We will even have calls in between. People really get entitled to others time and it's insane.

I know someone's gonna say it but no the entitlement wasn't even remotely as bad with the older phones. Smartphones began putting pressure to respond because it was easier and then they introduced the "seen" option followed by the "typing" option.

KATIE LEAVING ME ON READ WHEN I ASK FOR FEET PICS

The shear amount of samsung/Microsoft bloatware on my samsung a55

A rare Lemmy thread that has more comments than kicks.

Stupid large dimensions, it simply doesn't fit in pockets anymore

The fact that I have to pay money for it. This thing should be paying me. Actually, everything should be. You there, reading this, fucking $50, now.

Other than that? It doesn't have a front-facing bottom speaker. Basically everything else is perfect.

The bloatware. And custom Roms being dead for all except Pixel

Lots of people covered other things I dislike more, so I'll say the curved screen at edges. I liked it flat better. It also makes it so much harder to install the screen protector.

The hardware fuse samsung put in that flips when you try to change roms and can never be replaced. Wtf kinda world are we living in :/.

The fact that it's got a dedicated hardware button that is locked to something useless/arbitrary (bixby...)

I don't own it like my computer, i'm forced to use the OS that google put, and i don't even have root access to it

The undocumented proprietary SoC and Modem. I want complete bit register level documentation of every piece of silicon used.

Battery life

Keeping too many things running in the background, making things laggy. (I do close out apps when I'm done using them, and I solve laggy times with the Optimize widget. I just wish it would automatically optimize)

The constant UI changes that fix nothing of importance and make using it less enjoyable.

A recent update changed the options for navigation from being able to hide the three icons at the bottom and swipe instead to make it like an iphone where you have one swipe up and it does things based on whether you hold or let go immediately and now the sides are go back swipes. They kept the option to show buttons, but apparently keeping the two options and adding this new train wreck as a third option is too hard. So to use my fulll screen real estate I have the joy of accidentally going back a page dozens of times per day, holding or not holding the swipe up the wrong amount of time dozens of times per day, and when I crop photos I constantly catch the stupid edge go back thing and have to cancel. At least it asks first I guess.

Why couldn't they keep swipe up for three things if they kept the buttons in the same spot anyway? I am still trying to get used to the new stupid thing after a few months because the bottom buttons are such a waste of space.

That is the worst offender, but changing icons, how notifications work, and several other things are just annoying enough tl not drive me away but feel like change for the sake of change. I know some changes can require a lot of maintenance to have multiple options, but keeping a basic navigation option when adding a third should not jave been a big deal.

Receiving calls and texts from people.

Probably the fact that I can't unlock the bootloader

Had a Galaxy S8 and loved it. Got a Pixel 6 and now the slow fingerprint sensor is the bane of my existence. Why did they put it on the front? Why is that the standard now? It sucks, it's just slower and less ergonomic.

The camera bump.

Spam and ads

I just want micro SD and removable batteries again.

They are slippery. So they require a case. Why not, i dunno, make them easier to hold? The phone design doesn't matter if it's always hidden.

Context: I have an iPhone 14 and I drive a 2012 Fit. The Fit first gen came with a USB port that connects to the stereo.

When I connect my phone to the stereo in my car, 4/5 times the iPhone will launch the Music app, and play the first track in my library. That’s been true for quite some time (since iPhone 7 at least.) I listen to podcasts on a non-Apple app, and I listen at 1.5x speed. Since the iPhone 12, when I disconnect the phone from the car or turn the car off, there’s a 9/10 chance Music will start playing, at 1.5x speed. This clearly has something to do with Core Audio and the old dock connection system in iOS, and it will almost certainly not be addressed because it’s only going to affect older cars that don’t have 3rd party CarPlay stereos installed, and Apple only cares about CarPlay now.

The fact that it won't have any record of calls I missed while the phone was off or didn't have reception, although actually that's probably the fault of the service provider. They can send me texts I missed. Why can't they send me a list of missed calls?

Can’t listen to music while watching a video or listening to a podcast.

Under screen fingerprint reader (pixel 7 pro) . It's a downgrade from reader on the back of the phone (pixel 5). It's slower, less accurate, and worst of all, at night it often results in being flashed with a bright light.

I thought it'd be more convenient having the reader on the front, so i can unlock the phone without lifting it, but most of the time it's a nuisance because i doesn't work as well.

• Samsung bloatware
• Not being able to access files in a sane way both from a computer and in some extent from a phone without using 3rd party solutions.

And yeah, that's it. But I am not needy.

It's too darn big. I'd love another Nexus 4-sized phone.

In iOS how hard it is to glance the time and date while watching a full screen video.

The screen protector is peeling just a little bit around the edges, but it's put on really well, and I don't want to use the replacement just yet, but it's slowly ever encroaching and leaving more and more of a dead zone in an area I don't touch all that often, but when I need to I question whether or not it's time to put the new one on.

It's been like this for almost a year now.

Also no ir blaster, so I can't subtly mute the commercials when I'm at the in laws.

I wish I had customizable buttons for like... Flashlight, or you know... Whatever I want.

Have had my S8 galaxy since release, and now various apps won't work on the OS. I'm being forced into buying a new phone at this point.

Software updates. They are disguised as security and feature updates while slowing down your phone to make you buy the newer versions.

Lack of physical keyboard.

Being a flimsy piece of shit comes in second.

I'm aware how that applies to basically every smartphone from 2013 - today. Currently rocking a used Galaxy S8

non-unlockable bootloader :(

(Samsung S10e, switching to Sony Xperia 6 soon...)

its bootloader isn't unlockable, and custom roms don't exist for it anyway

Under screen fingerprint sensors. Doesn't matter how old/new your phone is, they all suck. The one on my phone works... whenever it feels like it. That and OneUI sucks, but yk, custom ROMs ftw.

Not being able to install Graphene OS

It's not completely foss

With the phone itself I miss a headphone jack (using an adapter USB c to 3.5"), no hardware keyboard, and no replaceable battery.

In general I don't turn my phone off often enough, usually only once or twice a week I should turn it off more often.

Generally: That I can't mount my network samba shares into local folders without rooting the whole damn thing.

That I can't force my device to stay in wifi if no internet connection is available (to access local network only).

Device specific: That sometimes volume control is very buggy while putting in a headphone jack and I have to navigate into sub-sub settings hell to set everything back.

Even though I turned it off, my phone will sometimes pop open the AI assistant after hearing something not even close to the "hey Google" phrase.

I also hate that the new AI system for the assistant can't even do half of the shit I used the old assistant for. Which is why I turned it off.

i want a physical qwerty keyboard like the pro1x

After close to 6 years of use it’s reaching the end of its useful life. Unless there’s a catastrophic failure or something I plan to use it until it no longer gets updates, which should be some time next year.

I would be willing to put up with a more-massive phone -- especially a thicker one -- in exchange for longer battery life. Would also like a larger screen, mostly because I'd like more space for the onscreen keyboard.

I entirely understand people -- especially women, with clothes designed to often have smartphone-unfriendly, small, form-fitting pockets -- not wanting a large phone. There is also a market for smaller phones, and "bigger phone" is not the answer for everyone. But I'm fine with it for my own phone.

My #2 irritation is that I miss having a phone connector. I understand why manufacturers did it; it bought them a bit more space. I do like having active noise cancellation, and that requires some way to get power to a phone. But there are a long list of things that I like about having a simple, zero-latency, splittable, mixable, inexpensive, always-works-protocol cable that has been on pretty much every device for over a century. I don't have to worry about charging headphones. The 1/8th inch headphones jack is pretty durable.

My #3 irritation is that the industry -- spanning cell service providers, hardware providers, and software providers -- has the desire and is willing to try to make it harder to use phone data with tethered devices than with a phone device. I have no problem if you have quotas and then throttle when they're exceeded or something. I have no problem with you prioritizing a user who has made the least amount of usage of their quota. I have no problem with you even selling prioritized data. But for God's sake, you have no legitimate reason not to be hardware-agnostic. Don't try to dictate what I'm doing on my end of a data connection. Wired ISPs don't do this. You want multiple devices on the other end of your data service, they're fine with it, even provide hardware to do NATting if required on ISPv4 networks. I appreciate that wireless frequency is a scarcer commodity, but needing to make use of it intelligently should not entail caring which device on the end user's end is consuming it. If PC-tethered users are consuming way more than their share of bandwidth, then just throttle heavy users.

My S20FE checks a lot of boxes but I miss a few features from my s8+, mainly the status LED and the heaphone jack. I also am not a huge fan of the fingerprint scanner, but it works well enough so meh. Removable battery, obviously everyone wanta that. I also wish the operating system could could install custom OS.

I have a Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS. I would in change a thing. Best combo I've ever had.

Battery life is a little short, and the software support ends in about a year. Really wish I could keep this phone going for another 3 or 4.

Difficult to type on the outer screen because the keyboard is too squished horizontally (Galaxy Z fold 4)

Still looking for a keyboard that only suggests actual words

OH, least favorite.

I was wondering why everyone is so sarcastic.

Well, buggy software (MIUI) and the surveillance. I mean, there's a higher chance MIUI bricks itself during an update than with any Alpha-release custom ROM (so I don't update... [But it's also due to Android often removing features from API and breaking niche apps]).
E.g.: Wallpaper bug (stretched or awfully upscaled after changing brightness), brightness slider not working, broken screen rotation, battery drain, swapped L/R microphone audio channels, FM radio cutting out, system crashes and waves of killed apps, camera app in landscape has some buttons off-screen, MIUI screenshot tool occasionally breaks and stock screenshot tool is used (with full-blast audio sound effect no matter current volume settings), notification access service needs to be manually reset for each app after the app is restarted, 120Hz gets laggy after toggling battery saver on and off and needs to be manually reset, dark mode is forced on all apps but the setting to change this sorts all apps in random order,... Also, the Poco X3 Pro motherboard has a tendency to die. I am on this phone's third motherboard currently.

Also... the volume buttons can get stuck. Xiaomi phones have issues with dust particles making their way into buttons and activating them randomly.

It's awkwardly tall.

It's not compatible with LinaegeOS or any FOSS operating system, i checked.

A while back i would have complained that the fingerprint scanner was crap, but i actually got that working properly by entering the same fingerprint three times

Proprietary hardware

I dislike most of it, everything but paying contactless, making calls or SMS. I have a 2020 SE because it is small but I want a tiny dumb phone, being able to store my bank card on it to pay anywhere, and phone or SMS someone. The rest to me is useless, I very dislike it when I am somewhere and everyone is on their phone (mostly with the volume on 10 too), I don't even bring mine when I visit someone just to make a point how disrespectful it is when I am invited to your home and whipping out a smartphone.

How difficult it is to remove Google's bloatware.

No headphone jack, and having to deal with Samsung's bullshit. This will be my last phone from them.

It feels like the os I have wasn't designed for my phone. Buttons aren't scaled properly, system apps ask me for consent over "privacy concerns", no easy control over simple features like wallpaper, sluggish/buggy animations. I have a Redmi

That it isn't a librem 5 or one of those tinfoil hat phones

I know my beloved flip 4 will eventually develop a fault. I had it a month before the initial release. I love it and I don't like the new design of bigger front screen. So one day I'll be forced to upgrade.

The entire point of the mini screen is to minimise the contact with the phone, not to just replace it on a half screen.

The cost to use it no matter the network no matter how cheap the plans it's still a bill regardless that has to be to use it. Would be better if all we had was intranet via relays so nothing cost to use it not the internet not conversations over it etc.

Default clean up app that free my phone storage force ads into my face.

I accidentally turn on the auto show keyboard when opening the app drawer and now I dont know how to turn it off again. On a Pixel 6 pro.

That week long period of time when it would take 8 hours to charge

Too large! Came with bloatware. No other complaints though, I only use my phone for a few things.

Lack of OIS on the camera. Literally the only bad thing about it.

Charging circuit could do with more isolation. When I am charging the phone there is noise that comes through to headphone jack.

That its producer has gone bancrupt they have absolutely lived the enshittyfication while doing the settings in their custom Android and I am currently on the last supported android version (12) which will probably go unsupported soon-ish and the company I got the phone from has sold so few that the definitely better alternatives (Lineage, etc) don't have any reports of people who have done it with my device or even a tutorial. And reading into flashing it on an unsupported device is a rabbithole I currently don't want to spend time with. And if I fuck up I can't even write the company to fix it for me or smth like that...

Still running a Samsung note 8, probably the biggest thing I dislike is kinda wish it was a little smaller. It might fit in my pocket better, would probably be easier to hold, and I would be fine having other devices for stuff where I need a bigger screen. Not a huge deal, but I do kinda miss having a medium sized smartphone.

• File system access being locked down unless you're rooted. I basically makes using some retro emulators impossible because in some cases the emulator installs the ROMs into the data partition which the launcher can't access.
• The inevitable forcing of Google/Apple's fucking A.I into every aspect of my phone. I can only opt out for so long before it's just baked into the OS itself with no way to disable it. If I want to ask an AI a question, or to double check my code for errors, I'll go to a website and ask it. I don't need/want it doing shit proactively all the time.

Samsung S22 Ultra. Probably battery life, specifically that 15% means "you have 5 minutes left". And how long it takes to open the camera app and take a photo.

OS is okay, performance outside of the camera issue is okay, size, camera quality, screen, s-pen... I could have changed it this year and chose to skip. I might change it next year or even try to make it to 2026. New battery might be needed for that.

S23 ultra.

1. Finderpint sensors still suck. Get face ID on these please
2. Why does the device control button live on the left when swiping down the first time, but on the right on the second swipe? Put them on the same side for the love of god.