What's kinda crazy is we could reimplement the notification LED with blue OLED now just via software. Just no one has done it.

Edit: It's been done, but a quick Google search says it no longer works. I might get bored and write one.

Edit2: This one seems to be working fine for me.

A headphone jack, bluetooth sucks, it's convenient but it sucks. It's audio quality is bad, it's latency is bad... it's just all bad.

IR blaster in phones

Headphone jack. Next to my bed is the one good Bluetooth headset, the two crappy backup sets for when it is charging, and the gigantic earmuff yardwork set for when the good one is still charging and the 2 shit ones have already died.

In the gaming sector, nothing has adequately replicated the stylus used by the DS, 3DS, and Wii U. It was the best way to play a few signature games like Elite Beat Agents (now incarnated as Osu) and Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Touchscreens are just a bit too universal and resilient for us to go back to them.

IR blaster. I could control just about anything in my house with my old Galaxy S6. Made it so convenient to have a universal remote built into the phone. Especially when you end up in a hotel or at a friend's house and can't find a remote.

I miss the instant channel switching on old analog tv sets. Everything now is digital so the switching is done with microprocessors, but on old sets you could flip through about 5 channels a second, as fast as you could press the button.

Less of a feature and more of a design, but I miss phones being small. The iPhone 4S was the perfect physical size IMO and that thing looks tiny compared to my fuckhuge S23U. The physical bloat of the past 5 Galaxys is why I've decided not to go with Samsung for my next mobile

Not sure if an automatic transmission qualifies as a modern gadget, but I remember push starting my car back in the day when the battery died.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention IR transmitters in phones. Luckily, some phones are bringing them back (cough OnePlus Open cough)

Memory card slots.

I can tolerate a missing headphone jack, a non replaceable battery, but a missing memory card slot is just too much.

At the moment, the only non Chinese brand of phones that includes this slot are Samsung I think. And even then, certain models also include it.

Good keyboards on computers. At the office, everything are those extremely uncomfortable $5 dell keyboards. At a climbing gym or pool, the liability iPads that you sign forms on is using those really uncomfortable apple keyboards too.

I miss the better keyboards that we had back 25 years ago. Modern box jades bring some of that back for your own PC.

I'm sad that popup front cameras didn't catch on. I only remember 2 or 3 phones that had them. For me it's the perfect compromise - this way you can make an end to end screen without the need for a notch, and since I very rarely use the front camera, I wouldn't be too concerned about the durability of the popup mechanism. The only real downside I see is that it complicates waterproofing.

IR transmitter on my phone!

Things in general used to be made to last / hard to break.

The Nexus One had so many features I miss:

Trackball for scrolling

Notification light built into the trackball with customizable colors depending on the app

Back plate came off, replaceable battery

Small and a one handed wonder, the trackball kept my fingers off the screen

It was a replacement for my jail broken iPhone OG, such a better interface for me than the iPhones and it had very basic multitasking when the other guys could only do one app at a time

Edit: Formatting

I miss how gadgets used to be nifty and little. Every time I get a new phone now I have to stretch my fingers more and more just to hold it.

FM receiver on phones + 3.5mn jack was a crucial source of local radio transmissions. I suspect some phones still ship radio receivers but the popular types like Samsungs and iPhones don’t seem to care (or perhaps that competes with their music and podcast markets).

Small Flagship Android Phones. Im just not a big fan of phones which doesnt fit into pockets :(

Size. I really don’t like the current 6”+ phones. The last phone I really liked was Google Nexus 5, because it had just 5" display.

Oh yes the notification light was incredible. I had one on my Pixel 2 XL. I just switched phones like a week ago to a Nord N200 and it doesn't have one. Not too big of a deal though.

I wish phones still had IR blasters but those are long gone. It would be awesome to control my Edifier speakers with my phone as a remote control.

Edifier RC10E (Unofficial remote control for Edifier R1280DB speakers) https://f-droid.org/packages/ir.remote.edifier.rc10e/

Edit: Also how about a good camera? All mid range and low end phones today have like 3 or 4 mediocre cameras because it looks fancier then having 1 nice camera.

Affordability?

My 1st phones were around €200, now you only find cheap junk that breaks within a year at that prize point. Having to cough up €500-700 for a phone that lasts a few years sounds excessive. Best phone until now is my '18 Nokia 6.1. Prize was €300 and it's still going strong.

The ability to reach every part of the screen with the thumb on the hand holding it

Physical keyboards. I want a modern Blackberry that actually gets some half-assed OS support. Unihertz Titan was a neat one but had some quirks.

A lot of what I'm seeing here is included on my Sony Xperia.

Headphone jack, notification light, SD card.

I do miss having a replaceable battery like my older LG phones had and stereo fromt-firing speakers like my HTC One M8.

I miss phone bodies being plastic. Sure, metal feels premium but you can't drop your phone without leaving a permanent mark on it. Not to mention how stupid the idea of having glass background is. These days it's hard to see a phone whose glass is not messed up.

To be honest, peak design for me was Samsung's Galaxy S2. I loved that device. Thin, very light, perfect size for my hands. I'd kill for something like that but upgraded to modern standards. I'd also love to see devices with physical keyboard. I waited for BB Key3 to come out when they decided to discontinue the line. Ended up with yet another Samsung device.

A built-in scripting language. The TI-83 line of calculators have an app programming language that requires you to side-load code from another computer, but they also have TI-BASIC, which allows you to write a wide variety of scripts right on the calculator itself. This should be standard on all 'smart' devices. It's so stupid to have gigahertz of computing power in your pocket and not be able to do anything without writing the app on another machine.

I know Termux for Android exists and that's a good start, but I'd like to see something baked right into the OS that has access to all my device's cool sensors and gizmos. The camera, the microphone, the aux port, the usb port, the accelerometer, the bluetooth antenna... all of those things should be exposed to the user. This would be a really good use case for 'visual' programming ala Scratch, since you could assemble a script right from a touch screen instead of having to plug in a keyboard.

My 2001 flip phone could schedule sms messages to be sent and it took smartphones a decade ish to add that feature.