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.
The shear amount of samsung/Microsoft bloatware on my samsung a55
Maybe give the universal android debloater a try. Its a pretty useful tool.
I did it I used universal android debloater new generation
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.
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
It’s too darn big. I’d love another Nexus 4-sized phone.
HELL YEAH! Finally someone who thinks they’re too big these days.
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.
I just want micro SD and removable batteries again.
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.
Not being able to install Graphene OS
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.
No headphone jack, and having to deal with Samsung’s bullshit. This will be my last phone from them.
How difficult it is to remove Google’s bloatware.
It’s not completely foss
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.
No removable battery.
Fixed battery and removal of headphone jack and SD card slots were 1000% anti-consumer practices designed to cost you more money and make your device lifespan as short as possible. I don’t see the battery problem going away - why enable your phone to last twice or three times as long when they can just force you to have to buy a new device when the battery is shot? At least we got our card slots and jacks back (mostly).
I am also salty that phones USED to have IR blasters and they don’t anymore. IR LEDs cost next to nothing, another feature that was amazing but thrown away to save 5c per unit.
battery
I don’t think that this is a conspiracy by phone manufacturers to force purchases of phone hardware.
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All kinds of devices use fixed batteries these days, not just smartphones. It’s cheaper, lighter, makes the device stronger, avoids them having to deal with “User X bought a counterfeit battery that then caught fire” – that’s a real issue for lithium batteries, unlike traditional alkaline/NiMH-type removeable batteries. Virtually the only device class I can think of where removable lithium batteries are the norm is high-end flashlights – anything on !flashlight@lemmy.world probably supports removable 18650s or similar. I have gone out of my way to get a lot of devices that use AA batteries or maybe 18650s, but there are just tons of products, including in highly-competitive, low-barrier-to-entry industries like gamepads, where it’d be impossible to form a cartel to refuse to offer a device with removable batteries. And yet they’ve mostly moved to fixed batteries. There is no industry convention for removable, BMS-enabled, lithium batteries the way AA or the like were traditionally used in devices.
If there were a cartel driving this against consumer wishes as a whole, you would have just smartphones doing the fixed battery thing, not the consumer electronics industry as a whole.
If it were cartel-driven, I’d also expect to see, in a situation like that, manufacturers making hefty use of price discrimination – like, think of how some laptop vendors charge a premium for devices with a lot of RAM when they have soldered RAM. But in the market today, the differences in battery size are minimal. Google makes a “large” version of the Pixel, and they barely bump the battery up, even with a slightly larger screen.
Instead, it was associated with the shift across consumer electronics to non-removable batteries with the move to lithium batteries, which is what you’d expect if sketchy batteries were a problem.
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Phones in particular have a space and weight premium, so compared to a lot of devices that aren’t held in your hand, using removable NiMH batteries or the like is more of an issue.
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I was super stoked to find out my OnePlus Open has an IR blaster! I missed it on my old galaxy note 4. It is surprisingly convenient, and doubles as a fun way to mess with TVs in public spaces.
I can get the battery replaced on my phone for a fraction of the money it would cost me to buy a new phone. So I have to take it in to the shop for an hour. Big deal. I can do that once every few years. And I can still use wired headphones with my phone even though it doesn’t have a headphone jack. Sheesh, I wonder how that works.
The biggest anti-consumer practice to make your device lifespan as short as possible is whatever software update practices the manufacturer has. Annual major versions increase hardware requirements - I can tell every day how my 5 year old phone is getting long in the tooth. Lack of long-term software support is another way to make sure the average user buys a new device well before the old device has reached end of life.
