Anon notices what they've taken from us

They'll take away volume control (SW/HW buttons) and replace with dynamically adjusting "magic volume" so that you can't mute ads.

Oh Christ. You've just triggered a premonition in me–the Galaxy S32 Ultra will be the first smartphone with no physical buttons or ports. You can turn it "off," but that will only turn on a sort of extreme power saving mode. It will still ping your location once every few minutes, and will keep the fingerprint scanner active. You will "turn on" the device by holding your finger on the fingerprint scanner for four seconds. They will advertise the "quick startup" as a new feature. Volume will be controlled by sliding your finger along the right edge of the phone, which the screen will wrap around all the way to the back. It will be impossible to hold the phone without touching some part of the screen.
It will only allow wireless charging. You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards. In reality, this will be to prevent you from using ADB to remove apps that come with the phone. You cannot turn off mobile data. You cannot turn off location. You cannot use a third party SMS application. You cannot choose your own wallpaper. You cannot set a private DNS. You cannot install applications that haven't been approved by Samsung. You cannot block ads. This is all covered on page 74 of subsection 32(a) of section G8 of the terms and conditions that you agreed to when you set up the phone.
They will meet the physical limitations of how well a small lens can focus light. Zoom will cap out at 150x. Nevertheless, there will be seven cameras.
- Just so you know, this comment is visible on the internet for anyone to see, and has been for 2 years.
  When they actually introduce all these fantastic new features, we will know who to blame for the idea.
- correction a bit, you can use adb via wifi. That's what I do to sideload an app to my Android TV
- You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards.
  Making devices water-proof is also a marketing scheme to avoid replaceable batteries :
  Some manufacturers are already eyeing an exemption for batteries used in "wet conditions" to opt out electric toothbrushes and possibly wearables like earbuds and smartwatches. The exemption is "based on unfounded safety claims," states Thomas Opsomer, policy engineer for iFixit, in Repair.EU's post.
  Despite the coming up regulation on batteries and waste batteries by the EU Council batteries in water-proof devices will probably be exempt from being replceable, because the water proof feature of the device cannot be guaranteed. This undermines the right to repair and manufacturers can hope that customers replace their entire devices soon. Making phones water-proof is a loophole to seal off the device so that it is not to be repaired, at least without keeping the water-proof features after repairing.
- nahhh you'll be able to choose your own wallpaper, the average user will eat up all of those "feautres" but god forbid Keighleeeigh can't put her little baby Xaileeyn as her screen saver
- This is when I go back to having a "dumb" phone 🫡
- Why are people up voting this? This is such ridiculous FUD that I can't take it seriously.

Next will be memory. They will say everything you meed should be stored online for a subscription fee.

Microsoft is already trying hard. My poor mom did not notice all her files are on OneDrive. Now she has two laptops with everything remote on OneDrive. It's has some advantages, but it's annoying in so many more ways.
- There's a setting in Onedrive to keep a copy of everything on the device. It will still get stored in the cloud too, but it means that everything will be available if the internet goes down.
- I fell victim to that :(
- It's not annoying at all. It's peace of mind. People are just not used to it
This is Apple already.
Oh. You can only afford 4GB iPhone? Not to worry, for only $10 a month we can store stuff for you.
- Also we got rid of photo stream and if you delete the file from the cloud then we remove it from every device
Google keeps trying to back up my non existent photos. It's annoying.
- Google photos made it difficult to download or delete your pictures on purpose. You have to manually select them. There is still a way to get them and it was because of GDPR, when you ask google for the whole data of your account they include the pictures and video from google photos.

Don't forget the RGB notification led!

I switched to Chinese brand phones, they still have all this and they're dirt cheap, currently rocking an Ulephone power armor 18t, which also has a flir infrared camera and a microscope for some reason. No I'm not joking, they work surprisingly well and have come in handy more than I thought they would!

Not sure I'd consider £600 "dirt cheap" but the thermal camera is definitely cool.
- They have frequent sales, i got it for under 300
That was the first thing I missed when I went to a Galaxy S22. But aodNotify works great as replacement (you can make your own notification light this way and customize it, not a lot of battery drain either due to the OLED screen). But yeah, removing the notification light sucked.
All except the IR blaster, right?
And optional microscope connects to the phone, looks like.
- Yeah, missing the IR blaster unfortunately! It does have an accessory port for microscope/endoscope, I just got an endoscope but haven't tried it yet.
Don’t forget the RGB notification led!
The Nexus One had this, the trackball had an RGB LED inside it. With custom ROMs it could be customised to flash different colours and patterns for just about anything.

THEY TOOK MY SLIDE OUT QWERTY KEYBOARD!

At least removable batteries will be mandatory in EU by 2027.

There are different categories of removable.
With my old Note, I had an extra battery that came with case/charger combination. If my battery on my phone died, I could swap the battery in 10 seconds.
- It states that any battery should be removable and replaceable by the user. So this slap on tactic will only work if your device has no internal battery.
  I also noticed this is for all batteries. Not just phones, but also cars etc.
  EDIT: As any EU law there is a lot of nuance and exceptions. I dig a little further and found the following:
  The regulation introduces requirements that say that portable batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by the end-user and LMT batteries and cells in LMT batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by an independent professional.
  So what is LMT?
  The regulation defines five battery categories depending on how the battery is used:
  Portable batteries
  Light means of transport (LMT) batteries
  Starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) batteries
  Industrial batteries
  Electric vehicle (EV) batteries
  I couldn't find any concrete wording for "easily removed and replaceable". But I sure hope it means no more glue for the portable batteries.
  Source: https://www.intertek.com/blog/2023/08-17-battery-regulation/
No. This law keeps being misquoted, and people are going to be disappointed if they go into 2027 thinking we'll be able to pop out batteries like the good ol' days.
It does not necessitate battery removal like that. Only that it not be too difficult to change out for a repair (i.e. stuff like gluing it in place with a strong glue, or necessitating removing the display before the battery). That's still a good change, I'd be happy if it were something like removing 4 screws then unplugging, but it's not the same as what everybody makes out.
It also doesn't apply at all for batteries over a certain capacity, or so long as the battery retains 63% capacity or more (presumably this means throughout the warranty period, but I'm unable to find a timeframe for which this standard gets applied) from 2027, or 73% from 2030.
There's also a 2 year grace period after the law comes into effect where it won't really be applied.

The IR blaster needs to come back. They were mostly on phones pre-smart device where they had super limited usage. With a smart device, they could practically do anything. I wanna use my phone as a universal remote, damn it.

I want a 0hysical.keyboadd too. Touch screen sucks.

I had it on my Xiaomi around 5 years ago, amazing stuff. Could turn on-off air conditioning anywhere, great party trick

Smartphone manufacturers, if you're reading this:

I spent 6 hours on google to find a phone with a screen smaller than 6 inch. I did find none (except an old iPhone, but I want android), so I had to buy one 6 inch. It is too unwieldy. I am annoyed.

There is a serious market for people like me. Do not look away. Somebody will buy these phones.

Also, by the way, it's not bad if the phones are a bit thicker.

There is a serious market for people like me
Unfortunately this just seems to be not true. Samsung, sony, google, apple all had smaller phones in their lineup at one time but eventually pulled them from the stack because they were not profitable. Don't even get me started on the small phone scene in the budget segment. Absolutely no options exist. The unfortunate reality is that while small phone enthusiasts like us are very vocal, we a vocal minority and not enough of us exist who can make designing a smaller phone viable for companies.
See, I want a smaller screen on my phone too, my big issue is that when manufacturers go with a small screen, they usually also think "budget phone". No. Fuck you. I want a premium phone, same as any other flagship, but smaller. Sure, you can lose a camera, I don't care as long as the pictures are still decent... You can put in a smaller battery too, there isn't as much space inside so I get it.... But give me all the same of all the other sensors and storage and everything.
They just won't.

They removed my slide out keyboard, too.

I just want my physical keyboard back, damnit!
- They now sell it as an addon in a phone case

You know what else they've taken from us? Actually unique designs for phones. When I look at modern day smartphones, for some reason they look like clones of each other. Where's all the spunk that these manufacturers used to put in their devices?

Fuck you, minimalism. Ever since you've ruined my iPhone back in 2013, my life has never been the same.

I think the fun stuff is all Chinese which doesn't get marketed in the US. Someone in this thread linked the Unihertz Tank which seems crazy fun.
https://www.unihertz.com/products/tank-2
There's literally still dozens of phones and manufacturers that have unique everything. It's just not your typical 1k dollar phone. Gotta look for smaller brands.
- My IQ has officially gone down today. I shall now be punished by swimming in an ocean of downvotes.

I love it when uninformed troglodytes complain about a hole in the screen. They didn't add a hold in the screen. The hole was already there. They just wrapped your screen around it for more screen. 😅

It's really infuriating seeing the downvoted on some other replies that point this out. The time/notifications/battery bar along the top used up screen space. Now those notifications are in the formerly dead space with the camera. It is objectively better. It's not debatable because there is measurably more useable screen space without making the phone larger.

If this hasn't been done already, being able to unlock the bootloader
Adding "AI" integrated into the OS with vague benefits even though the processing is done on the cloud (like Windows) just so the OEM can spy on you better
Forced volume limiters: The phone won't let you stay at max volume for more than 5 minutes a day, even if connected to a BT device set at substantially under max volume
Making it take more clicks to disable Internet, Bluetooth, other connected features
DRM built into Android itself
Being able to sideload
Ads within the OS

All of these are already on their way to being implemented:

Already the case with the vast majority of phones
Pixels already have this. Samsung is focusing on this in 2024. Several Chinese OEMs already have some version of this.
This was an idea Google attempted to implement in Android 14. Seems like it didn't go through that year, but there's always this year.
Google already made it harder to do this in Android 12. Apple also does this with the toggles only disabling WiFi/BT until tomorrow. Other OEMs are good for now.
After widespread disdain for Google's Web Environment Integrity BS, Google is quietly pivoting to this stupid change.
Google is now making it harder to do this on all Android phones. Now, you can only sideload apps targeting an Android version at most 8 behind the current one. This disables lots of little FOSS projects that were light on system resources.
Most Chinese OEMs already do this, although you can usually turn it off. Samsung used to do this, but backpedaled. Also bloatware exists.

I fucking hate the volume limiter. I'll be listening to podcasts through the vehicle radio, and suddenly notice that ive been straining to hear it fornthe last 20 minutes. Sure enough, the damn limiter decided it was that time of day to protect my half-assed hearing.
- Google was attempting to make it even worse, by having it always happen no matter what. The only way to restore the regular volume was to manually click OK on the nag screen and press the volume up button.

The EU is mandating easily replaceable batteries from 2027.

Making them increasingly difficult to hold ("but design!" They cry) so you "accidently" have to buy a new one again.

So what look at that beautiful Phantom Silver S21 Ultra uhjhj

-send by Silver S21U

I still have an S9 with a notification LED.

From my cold, dead hands.

still using the 3.5mm on my S8 every damn day

I bought a Sony Xperia 1 V mostly because of this. No hole on the screen, it has a 3.5mm jack and tooless access to its SD/Sim card tray

Sony does a lot of things right, but I'm not spending €1200 on a phone that gets a measly 2 years of updates. With that hardware and that price tag there's no excuse for that bullshit.

Physical keyboard? Notification LED?

Controversial: it was much easier and safer to text while driving with a physical keyboard. You could type with one hand, hold the steering wheel with the other, all while still looking at the road because you could feel where the buttons were.
- Controversial: Drinking while driving was easier and safer with a beer helmet since you can just sip directly from the straw instead of looking down to pick up the can.
- I'd still prefer you didn't do that

I use all four cameras. (one is a sensor)

If you want the good camera, you need to get the giant version of the phone.

If you want a phone that fits in human hands, you can only choose from subpar cameras.

All I want is no front camera, single rear camera and no glue to get to battery.

Here's my take on what phone companies will do next: replaceable batteries are back! With an inkjet twist:

1- You have to buy them precharged

2- You can no longer recharge them

3- The phone will explode if it detects a 3rd party battery

80 cameras and nothing to do and no where to go

For me it's the small size. They are so big now I can't fit them in my pocket or use them with one hand.

Who doesn't use all the cameras on their phone? Is there like a specific focal length you never use? Or are you unaware that zooming in the camera app switches lenses?

I rarely use the camera at all.
- Then buy a smartphone that doesn't prioritize the camera

Subscription to the camera on your own phone, capped # of photos per week and only basic adjustment/editing features for the entry tier.

Google is already doing this with their photo editor app. All the new features require a subscription.

we need to make open source wireless communications infrastructure.

how?

idk the FCC is the major block as long as it's funded by telecom

HAM radio have been around for decades.

They also gave us those things before they took them away.

Remember: you're beholden to the whims of capitalism until it's gone.

The manufacturer giveth and the manufacturer taketh away.

I don't understand why everyone hates the notch, or especially the hole punch camera now. You could just disable the pixels next to the notch going back to a regular screen, and if you don't it's only extra screen space. Even more so with the hole punch. Why more screen bad?

Because front camera is not just a feature I'm forced to pay for, despite never using it once in my life, but now it also makes my experience shittier by adding a hole in my screen. I hate that.

Phone nerds are such losers.

They removed 3 ways water could get inside the phone

They made it a thin piece of glass that slips out of your hand.
- still better than plastic

One must recognize that if those changes were truly not popular they would not have stuck.

Not necessarily true. Sometimes a corporation is willing to continue with a bad choice in order to achieve some strange goal. Just look at Facebook absolutely going all in on Meta or Disney going ham on strange starwars choices.