Asklemmy

Removable batteries

Batteries that lasted a week.

Multi-colored LED notification light - better yet the Nexus One trackball + multi-colored LED light in one.

Headphone jack is always nice. I don't use it anymore, if anything USB-C dongle is fine.

An indestructible phone. Nokia and Sony Ericsson had some phones that were stronger than a brick. This weak glass sucks.

I had an htc one that could transmit IR signals meaning you could mess with TVs and other simple wireless electronics. You could also use the headphone wire as an actual radio antenna.

Honestly, I miss my hardware keyboard and not giving up so much screen real estate while typing.

I miss the notification LED on older Galaxy phones.

Active Edge, which LG originally came up with and that Google adopted with the Pixel 2. Of course they dropped it after a few devices.

It was basically a button/key press that you could configure to trigger actions by firmly applying pressure with you hands around the lower third of your phone. It gave a very satisfying haptic vibration response based on the amount of pressure you applied and you could even set the amount of pressure until it was triggered. It had something magickal about it.

If you're interested in the tech: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/10/19/google-pixel-2-teardown-ifixit/

Physical keyboard. I miss touch typing one handed.

I miss the function when the phone would stay tethered to its cable at home where it wouldn't bother me all the time when I was out and about.

The back fingerprint reader used to have gestures, so swiping down on it could for example open the notification shade. Was really good for not having greasy fingerprints on your screen

I kinda miss flip phones? These days phones are too big for my hands and pockets. I find myself buying cheaper phones just so it's a little smaller.

Yet another of Google's discontinued pet projects with tons of potential but that that they quickly lost interest in, my trusty (now officially unsupported) Pixel 4XL has a Soli Radar sensor that I'm going to miss when I finally break down and buy another phone.

It is so nice to be able to just wave generally in the direction of my phone to do stuff. I use it all the time when I'm driving to skip songs, or repeat the last song, or pause the music, etc. without taking my eyes off the road. It really is a shame to me that they threw a bunch of money at a legitimately cool project like that, and then seemingly just abandoned it entirely.

Add it to the list, I suppose.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 had a feature in the camera app which would take several pictures in a row and you could then choose the one with best quality. Extremely useful feature especially in low light. I'm sure there's an app out there that can do this but I can't find one.

Nokia phones in 2000 could record your voice for any command you wanted. The voice command reliability of those phones is beyond superior to what is offered by today's voice assistants.

Welp - I'm thoroughly convinced to never upgrade from my BlackBerry Key1. I will hang on to my multi-day battery life, 3.5mm headphone jack, keyboard, notification LED, fingerprint reader, and cheap, replaceable parts till phones stop being a fucking thing.

I recognize this list of "Gone for everyone but me" may not be perfectly in the spirit of this question, but all the same: Thanks everyone! :D

I'm not sure exactly what it was called but any time you took a photo with a Note8, it was always taking photos from right before to right after the photo. This resulted in much fewer garbage photos because a few frames before or after the shutter was pressed would be a better photo, one that is not blurry! Now instead of a useless photo, I would have at least something workable. I have not seen that on any other phone with this feature, including my current one.

Dunno if this counts, but screens that fit in my goddamn pocket.

Phones: ability to throw it on the ground without anything bad happening to it.

Other: software that you could just own.

SensMe in Sony and Sony-Ericsson phones and players. It was the tool that analyzed your music collection and sorted it according to energy, mood and tempo.

The best variant was on the later products whey you had a list of channels representing either moods/styles (Energetic, Emotional, Lounge, Dance etc.) or time of the day (from 'Morning' till 'Midnight'). The results were very good, especially for the time channels (except the morning) which were perfectly fitting the mood and pace of times of the day, much like Indian ragas. It really felt like your personal radio stations, freeing you from having to make playlists by yourself ever again...

It was discontinued in 2010s because of declared low adoption by users according to some obscure internal studies :( I've been dreaming of replicating it using Python ever since, but never had time to do a proper research.

Not really a feature. But I really I wish I could upgrade my phone. Like, get a new camera with better quality or a new battery with higher energy density in an older phone. Stuff like this.

Keyboard and the ability to physically close the phone to turn it off/sleep/hangup.

Physical keys that you had to type multiple times to get letters. I could write a whole text message with my hands in my pocket.

The knock code really was so convenient and safe. No way for other people to see it.

I was an avid fan of LG phones, especially the G series. I mean yeah, some features were kind of pointless (G5 Module??)

The Snake game you could play on push button phones. Oh my goodness.

So back in the day you could hold home to pull up Google assistant and tell it to translate whatever was on your screen. No matter what app, browser, etc it just worked. I have no idea why they ever got rid of it. Now with the modern version of tap to translate text has to be highlight-able in order to be translated, which is a bone headed decision. It's like they never use the stuff they make.

I had a 2nd Gen moto x. It had proximity sensors around the screen that allowed you to make gestures over the phone to do things like check notifications, pause music, dismiss calls, etc. They also offered a lot more customization options than any other phone I know of. Mine had a leather back, which was available in a few colors. They also had several options for wood backs. It was a really nice phone and I was sad when it died.

I miss the kick stand that HTC phones had. Yeah I know there are phone cases with kick stands, but in my experience they don't work as well.

Not phones, but TVs. My first flatscreen tv(not a smart tv yet) had a picture in picture mode, so I could play games while my family watched TV. That was nice, but it seems to have just vanished as a feature in modern TVs.

Predictive text like my Nokia's T9. It knew how English worked and what the probability of a word in context was.

Now it's all: "the same time and consideration and I are going to be a good time to get the latest Flash player is required for video playback is unavailable right now because this video is not available for remote playback is unavailable right now because this...."