Ask Lemmy

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.

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

The lack of a fucking headphone jack

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

KATIE LEAVING ME ON READ WHEN I ASK FOR FEET PICS

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

A rare Lemmy thread that has more comments than kicks.

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 shear amount of samsung/Microsoft bloatware on my samsung a55

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 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 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

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

Probably the fact that I can't unlock the bootloader

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