Comment by Dyskolos@lemmy.zip on What is a nifty little feature modern gadgets have lost?

For me it’s the notification light you used to find on older phones, was particularly good to know if your phone was charged without picking it up

Absolutely the damn LED. I would love to trade the stupid never-being-used selfie-cam for a damn 5 cent LED.

And swappable batteries. And a headphone-jack. And root by default (imagine you winpc came with no admin-pwd. Lol)… And…

I used to love customising the notification colour on my old phones, so good.

I miss my headphone jack so damn much, I’m over Bluetooth earbuds breaking constantly and being so damn expensive and low quality.

Then buy phones with headphone jacks. Mine has one, I dont buy ones without it.

If it matters for you to have it, dont buy phones that cut it. If models with it keep selling, theyre less likely to ditch it.

I’d rather just buy a DAP than randomly replace a perfectly good phone with one that sucks in comparison.

And that why you’ll never get it back. You’re clinging to brand loyalty and hung up on arbitrary crap rather than just trying competing phones. Have you actually used any of those “suck” phones, or are you just going with the usual iPhone/high end android circlejerk?

You have assumed completely wrong, friend.

As I mentioned in another comment, if you’d bothered to read it, I have particular needs that mean I can’t really replace my phone with something else right now. I have absolutely no loyalty to brands, and I’m not clinging to something arbitrary.

Lol I only buy jack phones, and if you think they suck you need to shop in places that arent back alleyways

It was a perfectly good MacDonald’s, thank you very much!

But in all seriousness, I just have particular needs that literally can’t be met by anything else.

U could try a usb to jack converter. Looks stupid but at least there’s a jack. Quality sucks anyway as they all use cheap dacs now 😩

usb to jack converter

~~All~~ Most of the ones you can get nowadays actually have a sound chip inside the cable (in the flat part behind the USB-C). So they’re pretty much a USB-C soundcard with just a headphone out. So it’s worth shopping around to find one that has a good soundcard built in.

A good alternative is getting a decent portable Bluetooth audio receiver to plug your regular headphones into. Can get a better headphone amp that way.

There are phones that output analog audio over type C so you can have a type c to jack adapter with no dac inside, just wires. That is possible through Audio Adapter Accessory Alternate Mode.

My huawei tablet works with such an adapter, but when I try it with the samsung s10e which has a jack, it gives an error and doesn’t work.

Type C alternate modes are cool, too bad they are not advertised, they should be clearly labled and easily distinguishable. Type C has so many features yet it’s so hard to know what’s available without actually having the devices and connecting them. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

Thanks for the correction. I had thought that only some of the early Motorolas had that feature, but it looks like there are quite a few more phones that support analog audio out via USB-C.

From the wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#Alternate_modes

Moto Z/Z Force, Moto Z2/Z2 Force/Z2 Play, Moto Z3/Z3 Play

Sony Xperia XZ2

Huawei Mate 10 Pro, Huawei P20/P20 Pro, Honor Magic2, LeEco

Xiaomi phones

OnePlus 6T, OnePlus 7/7 Pro/7T/7T Pro

Oppo Find X/Oppo R17/R17 Pro

ZTE Nubia Z17/Z18

I’ve got a suprisingly good pair of USB C earbuds that I found in my mailbox at the moment, but yeah at some point I’ll probably get a DAC

I used to have a similar problem - even if well reviewed, budget and midrange bluetooth earbuds would not last while budget-midrange wired earphones would last forever.

Think it’s just build quality for bluetooth buds. I got a set of Galaxy buds, 1st gen, roughly 3+ years and still running strong to this day. Was not cheap though.

I’ve been through two pairs of Sennheiser’s wireless buds, and I’m just over it.

The only thing that might bring me back is the ANC, but even then I get significantly better ANC from my over ears, so probably not.

What I don’t understand is why the notification LED was removed in the first place? It can easily be put under the screen.
The LED was so helpful, and it’s so annoying when I don’t see an important message for hours, because I haven’t used my phone.

I’m guessing… they don’t want us deciding whether to engage with our phones, they want us looking at them more. If that means less convenience for us we can get fucked

I think you may have a point, It’s kind of weird how the first 10 years of smartphones, was an ever higher climb for better phones, driven by competition.
But now that everybody are dependent on the phones, they all agree on taking useful features away???

Fuck. You’re probably right. It’s all about nudging us towards the behavior they want.

It’s probably also a little safer with only system apis accessing system hardware. If you look at how the camera assembly is one piece and apps basically access the whole thing securely.

I used to have a custom ROM that would allow me to change the color based on which app had the most recent notification: FB was Blue, SMS was Green. Let me be prepared ahead of time if it was going to be important or not.

I used to have a custom ROM that would allow me to change the color based on which app had the most recent notification

Even more than that, in early versions of Android this setting was baked in. I had colors set based on text messages, emails, etc. I think around 2.x was when the option was removed.

I remember and miss that. Any remember the original droid with the slide out keyboard ?

I don’t know about the original, but I rocked a Droid 4 for the longest time. It’s probably my all time favorite phone. I really miss how quickly I could type and the extra screen space I got from not needing the software keyboard.

Ironically I was grateful for a custom rom to turn off the light. It was useful but I hated it at night because at least on my phone it was stupidly bright

Nowadays most phones have OLED screens, which can easily replicate the function of the notification LED with the “always on” feature.

Yet there are often warnings that even with OLED AOD eats a lot of battery, not so with a notification LED.
The absolute newest OLED that can do 1Hz refresh are better. But that doesn’t change that the removal of the notification LED was detrimental to the functionality of the smartphone.

OLED AoD eats a lot of battery because there’s still quite a lot of information(and thus, pixels turned on) shown on the AoD. A single pixel blinking on and off would at most use the same power as a dedicated notification led.

Someone else posted an app that gives the feature back. If you turn off other aid features and just use the app it won’t use more battery than a notification led.

If you turn off other aid features

What?

it won’t use more battery than a notification led.

If the screen has 60hz or higher refresh, I’m pretty sure it will. The screen itself may not use much, but the DAC will still use power.
I haven’t seen this actually tested, but many claim the difference in battery life is noticeable. I don’t think it matters much what app you use, many phones come with an AOD app, and I seriously doubt a third party app is better.

aid what?

Typo: aod feature. Always on display.

If the screen has 60hz or higher refresh, I’m pretty sure it will.

It’s supposed to drop down to 1hz. The CPU refreshing a pixel of an OLED screen or a notification led is the same power usage. That is even if you have a notification led, the CPU could still be stuck refreshing it at 60 hz.

I really can’t. I did it all. It just doesn’t come near the tiny lil LED shining bright.

And yet they don’t

Oh, in some cases the notification LED is physically there, but is disabled in software. At least I know that was the case with a bunch of Motorola phones, including my Moto G5s Plus.

I’m pretty sure mine has a tiny LED under the screen, that only shows very shortly on reboot. But as you say, it’s disabled for some weird reason.

Because if you can read an LED notification system you have no purpose to pick up the cellphone.

Cellphones are not designed FOR YOU. They are designed by marketeers for you to use.

Once you realize this, all the anti-consumer shit makes sense.

I have no effing clue. Maybe to get us to actually look at the damn phone more often? Because of the people who’re drowning in spam? Makes not THAT much sense. Probably to save a cent in circuit-design, because only the nerds were using the stupid LED? I really would like to know too.

I got all three on my XCover 6 Pro

But probably no easy root? That is imperative for me. I don’t buy gadget i wouldn’t own.

I have no idea honestly. It’s quite esoteric device so probably not.

Even I haven’t heard of it (yet). So most probably not. But still … :-)

I had an XCover 4 and hated the specs and the Samsung aspect. Too much bloat for my tastes.

I’m glad there are others still buying these phones though, and the “Pro” makes it sound like it has modern specs!

It’s very much a mid-range device but so was the price. It was still an easy decision since it is literally the only modern smartphone in existence that matched my minimum requirements. I’m coming from LG V20 so I still had to let go of FM-radio, optical image stabilization, IR blaster and the hi-fi DAC.

How’s the Samsung bloatware on it?

Root by default is an awful idea.

Of course not by default, that’d be dumb. Every app that wants it pops up a Y/N-dialogue. That’s how I want it. It’s my phone, goddamit. I might’ve phrased that a bit misleading :-)

I also just don’t understand why apple didn’t put one in the dynamic island, could have worked really well

Not sure but you can have the back camera led flash when you get a notification at least.

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