Debate: What's the best phone feature you want back?

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Mariyan Slavov
Mariyan Slavov
Phonearena team
Original poster
• 1y ago

The feature I miss the most is, hands down, design variety. I want crazy-looking, crazy-shaped phones with different display shapes and sizes, slides, swivels, rotating phones—you name it. It was so much more fun in the 2000s :))

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ninjajoe96
ninjajoe96
Arena Apprentice
• 1y ago

Samsung used to have an Auto-rotate feature where the device would use the front facing camera to check your orientation before rotating the display whenever the accelerometer detected rotation. The device never rotated the screen when you didn't want it to and it worked beautifully... Now I have to have my s22 in manual with the little rotation button popping up to trigger rotation myself as Auto-rotate is so unpredictable.

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Issamh
Issamh
Arena Apprentice
• 1y ago

The physical Keyboard as Blackberry did before.......

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Mariyan Slavov
Mariyan Slavov
Phonearena team
Original poster
• 1y ago
↵ninjajoe96 said:

Samsung used to have an Auto-rotate feature where the device would use the front facing camera to check your orientation before rotating the display whenever the accelerometer detected rotation. The device never rotated the screen when you didn't want it to and it worked beautifully... Now I have to have my s22 in manual with the little rotation button popping up to trigger rotation myself as Auto-rotate is so unpredictable.

That's a great shout! I have to manually disable auto-rotation when I'm in bed with my phone for the very same reason.

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Mariyan Slavov
Mariyan Slavov
Phonearena team
Original poster
• 1y ago
↵Issamh said:

The physical Keyboard as Blackberry did before.......

Great title image, right? :)))

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tokuzumi
tokuzumi
Arena Master
• 1y ago

In early Android builds (way back in the Donut/Eclair days), you could silence the phone (mute volumes) by swiping in one direction on the lock screen, or unlock by swiping the other direction. Made it very easy to silence the phone without unlocking. OnePlus has the alert slider, but no other Android phone maker offers a quick way to toggle between sound/vibrate/silent.

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MartyLK
MartyLK
Arena Master
• 1y ago

I'd love to see a Palm Treo-style phone with modern specs/hardware.

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DFranch
DFranch
Arena Apprentice
• 1y ago

I miss phones you didn't need to put a case on.

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Mariyan Slavov
Mariyan Slavov
Phonearena team
Original poster
• 1y ago
↵tokuzumi said:

In early Android builds (way back in the Donut/Eclair days), you could silence the phone (mute volumes) by swiping in one direction on the lock screen, or unlock by swiping the other direction. Made it very easy to silence the phone without unlocking. OnePlus has the alert slider, but no other Android phone maker offers a quick way to toggle between sound/vibrate/silent.

I often wonder about this, recently I've started using an iPhone (for work; I hate those things :P) and the mute switch is super useful. Why don't other manufacturers use it? Maybe it's a patent thing or something...

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Mariyan Slavov
Mariyan Slavov
Phonearena team
Original poster
• 1y ago
↵DFranch said:

I miss phones you didn't need to put a case on.

I feel you, we're all waiting for the glass sandwich to die out...

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