The topic 5 smartphone “innovations” no one asked for (and why they should be… is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
There’s no denying that modern smartphones are more powerful and versatile than ever. You can easily go half a decade without upgrading, thanks to the sheer performance of the hardware and the long-term software support many vendors now provide. Phone cameras have matured to the point where most of us no longer need a dedicated shooter, and you can even use your Android phone as a desktop computer that’s powerful enough to get real work done without feeling limited by its hardware.
But despite the impressive pace and scale of improvement over the past decade and a half, not all upgrades have been for the better. A number of smartphone “innovations” haven’t improved the user experience—quite the opposite. Some have actually hampered the overall usability and versatility of modern smartphones compared to what we had before. If you ask me, the following changes have done nothing but make devices we can no longer imagine living without a little worse.
About a decade ago, Apple unveiled the iPhone 7, which was an iterative upgrade over the iPhone 6S. However, the new model lacked one of the most important pieces of hardware found on its predecessor: the headphone jack.
Apple tried to dig itself out of that hole by claiming the move took “courage,” and that it was necessary to accommodate larger batteries and make the phone thinner. But the reality is that Apple launched the first generation of its wireless earbuds, AirPods, alongside the iPhone 7, and I reckon AirPods wouldn’t have gone on to become one of Apple’s most successful product lines if the iPhone 7 had included a headphone jack.
Some Android brands mocked Apple for the decision, but as it usually goes (sigh…), they followed the trendsetter and started ditching headphone jacks themselves. The modern phone market is devoid of models with a headphone jack, and despite high-end wireless earbuds offering pretty good sound quality, they still can’t match wired headphones even a full decade after they went mainstream. On top of that, wired buds don’t need batteries, so they tend to last much longer than their wireless counterparts.
AirPods are cool, but so is having money left in your wallet.
SD card slots had been a stalwart feature on smartphones ever since the early days of Windows Mobile and Symbian. Expandable storage was, in fact, one of the best things about smartphones because, for years, internal phone storage was laughably limited, even on flagships.
I remember getting a 256MB (that’s megabytes) memory card for my Nokia 6600 back in 2005. This allowed me to stuff the phone with more than 100 songs, transforming it into a proper MP3 player and letting me carry one less gadget with me, which was mind-blowing at the time.
But as phones started shipping with larger and larger built-in storage, they eventually lost one of their most useful features. While this was never an issue with iPhones, which have never had expandable storage, removing SD card slots really hurt Android users.
It started with flagship models, but nowadays most Android phones don’t have expandable storage, high-end or otherwise. The excuse this time was making phones waterproof, improving battery capacity, and SD cards becoming too slow to be useful.
But you can build a waterproof device with an SD card slot (virtually every waterproof phone has a SIM card slot), and you can accommodate a larger battery without ditching the card slot, all you have to do is make the phone slightly thicker. No one cares about phone thickness anyway.
SD cards, while relatively slow compared to UFS storage, are still plenty fast for storing photos, videos, and music, which are the things that fill up internal storage the quickest. Besides, if phone manufacturers worry so much about SD card speed, or lack thereof, they could equip their phones with microSD Express card readers.
The reality is that you’ll have a very hard time finding a phone with expandable storage, while cloud storage subscriptions have never been more popular. But now that memory and storage prices have reached historic highs due to global shortages, we might see this feature make a comeback in the near future. I know I’d love to see it.
The Samsung Evo Select Micro SD Card is a reliable SD card that comes in a variety of sizes and is plenty fast for most use cases.
During the early and mid-2010s, notification LEDs were all the rage on Android phones. As someone who often keeps his phone in silent mode, I loved them. A tiny LED was one of the most useful things on phones that had it because it would let you know you’d gotten a message or an email (or that it was time to charge the phone) with a subtle glow you could notice from the other side of the room.
But this all changed in the 2020s. The increasing popularity of OLED screens and the never-ending drive to make phone bezels thinner resulted in notification LEDs disappearing from smartphones almost overnight, replaced by AOD (Always On Display), which is useful but a far cry from the subtle informativeness of the tiny LED.
It’s not like phone manufacturers aren’t able to bring it back to modern phones. All it would take is a bit of software finesse, and they could create virtual notification “LEDs” around front camera cutouts, something third-party solutions like aodNotify already do surprisingly well. At least we’ve still got Nothing phones and apps such as aodNotify.
During the four years I used the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2, a phone that had a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, I never took it out of my pocket without unlocking it before I even glanced at the screen. It was all thanks to that rear-mounted sensor, which let me place my index finger on it while the phone was still in my pocket and unlock it instantly. I could also pull down the notification shade by swiping the sensor, instead of having to reach for the top of the screen, which was a neat and very helpful trick.
Under-display fingerprint sensors replaced rear-mounted ones years ago, but even after years of development and improvements, they still aren’t as fast or as reliable as their predecessors. Personally, I also find under-display sensors less conveniently placed. Sure, I can unlock my phone when it’s sitting on a table—but why would I do that when I can check notifications with a simple tap or a press of the power button?
If I want to reply to a notification or actually use the phone, I’ll pick it up, and the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor is simply easier to use when holding the device. Out of all the “upgrades” on this list, under-display fingerprint sensors make the least sense. Sure, I could use face unlock, but aside from newer Pixel phones, face unlock on Android phones is anything but secure.
The irony of phones never being more powerful, and never having longer software support, is that we still have to deal with batteries that degrade over time. No matter how beefy your phone is, after a few years its battery will degrade so much that keeping it alive through the day becomes a daunting task, no matter which battery-saving tricks you try to pull off.
Back in the day, the solution was simple: just buy a new battery, pop open the backplate, remove the old battery, install the new one, and voilà—your phone is as good as new. But these days, you either have to spend a serious chunk of cash replacing your phone’s battery or simply get a new device.
There’s a multitude of reasons why phones stopped including replaceable batteries. There’s waterproofing, slim designs with sufficient structural rigidity, the ability to achieve tighter component integration when the battery is sealed, and more.
But there’s also the fact that having a non-replaceable battery makes it more likely you’ll just get a new phone instead of going through the ordeal of replacing it. Manufacturers could still make phones waterproof even with replaceable batteries, and increasing thickness slightly would allow for both more powerful components and a user-replaceable battery.
If one “obsolete” feature from this list should stage a comeback, it’s this one. In an age where phones have hardware powerful enough to last for years, and when many now offer up to seven years of software support, replaceable batteries make more sense than ever.
Sure, modern phones are as powerful as laptops and can take photos that look as good as those made with standalone cameras, but they lack some of the conveniences we took for granted a decade ago. While I could get a phone with 1TB of internal storage, I’d rather pay less upfront and expand it with an SD card when needed, replace the battery myself in just a few minutes, and be able to unlock my phone before even taking it out of the pocket.
Powered by /e/OS operating system, the Murena Fairphone (Gen. 6) protects your data at all times, while at the same time protecting the planet. Made by 50% fair and recycled materials, in fair conditions and with one of the lowest carbon footprints in the market.