Android

Easily notification light. People always say "oh, it's totally obsolete with always on displays". But with a notification light I could focus on other stuff and the blinking light got my attention better. With the AOD, I always catch myself glancing at my phone. Also, the light's color clearly indicated which app caused the notification. I had White for calls, Green for Whatsapp, Yellow for the ebay app, Red for GMail and so on. "You can do all that with an OLED screen! It only lights up the pixels that-" Can you, though? All apps that I tried were utter garbage. Buggy performance, very battery hungry and very cumbersome to configure. I don't know if custom firmwares actually have that feature in a usable state nowadays, as I cannot root my phone anymore without losing core functionalities like online banking.

Yeah, everything tends to go to shit with time. I miss my Galaxy S2.

Apparently nearly everything I look for in a phone. Others have said IR blaster, side squeeze, notification light, and pop-up front camera, all of which were amazing.

I'd add an unlocked bootloader (I bought it, it's my phone to do what I want with), removable battery (hello instant charging), and a small form factor (so sick of needing two hands to do anything).

Not so much a gimmick, as much as something that seemingly went extinct that I miss: rear fingerprint sensors. I loved them on my Nexus/Pixels, and the in-screen one on my 6a is way less consistent and convenient.

Also it flashbangs me when I try to unlock my phone at night.

Removable battery, micro SD, sim slot etc

Does IR sensor count? I loved that on older phones so much.

It's been gone for a while now, but I really liked the IR blaster to use as a secondary remote when you can't find the remote because your toddler was playing with it. Dammit Susie!

That pop up camera on the OnePlus 7 pro.

That thing was cool as fuck. My roommate got the phone and I was VERY jealous even though I had a OnePlus 8T at the time.

Front facing stereo speakers were nice.

Idk if this is a gimmick but I love swiping on the rear fingerprint scanner to pull up/down the notifications and quick settings. I also got an app that lets me swipe left/right on the sensor to adjust the brightness.

IR blasters. They were nice as a little pocket universal remote.

The air gestures that Samsung put in the S5. It was a gimmick, but a useful one, since you could use it to control things without having to fiddle with the screen.

Also the screen-off gestures on the Oneplus 5. It was great for turning the torch on or opening apps without having to faff about as much with the screen.

Power button fingerprint sensors. I had one on my S10e, and I loved it - with the way I held the phone, my thumb naturally rested on the power button, so it was pretty much auto-unlocked.

Now they seem to have fallen by the wayside in favor of in-screen sensors - which are cool, but ever-so-slightly more cumbersome. Ah well, still better than facial recognition.

Can't say I love the feature but the front facing camera getting "integrated" into the screen isn't nearly as annoying as I thought it would be.

IR blaster, removable battery, MicroSD slot, analog headphone jack, unlocked bootloader, stylus. The Note 3 was the peak of android phone design. I'm using an S22 Ultra nowadays because of all those features I'm a huge slut for the S-Pen, even to the point of sacrificing all of the others... But I'd love for the rest of those to make a comeback.

On my motorola: quick shake side to side to enable flashlight. So easy to use, it's become second nature. I'll have to find a way to replicate that on the next phone I get.

Nokia N95 flipping both up and down. I really liked those music player buttons when flipping it down

On pixel phones, the squeeze for Google assistant feature. I used it all the time on my old pixel 2xl.

Material You. I wondered why they wasted resources for ... colors. But it's so nice to have a consistently colored UI across apps and across dark/light modes, and I wished that more apps would support it. Also, those pastel colors are less stressful for the eyes than the previous grey/blue.

I know it's not everyone's taste but I really like it.

Tablet computers. My thoughts on the first iPad were that it does everything a laptop, an iPod, and a Kindle all do, but worse. Next thing I knew, they were everywhere. I think traditional laptops are making something of a comeback, though.

My wife has an iPad and after using it for a bit, yeah I get it.

Rear power and volume buttons.

To this day my favorite phone remains the LG v10. It has nice metal rails on the side, a rubber removable back, sd card slot, aux port with a high end dac, wide(er) screen, and buttons on the back of the phones right where your indexed finger would rest when holding it.

Figure print sensor on the button didn't work all that well, but worked better than this shit on screen reader. The buttons being on the back meant your could just grab the phone in anyway with out worrying if you're gonna Power the phone off, turn the vol down, take a screenshot, etc. This also meant getting it knot phone holders was almost never an issue.

That was the closest an android phone got to perfection. After that they started trying to follow tends and phase out the good parts to the point of leaving the Android market entirely.

Fingerprint sensors

To show how old I am, a phone without a physical keyboard.

Probably the Quick View Window case on the LG G-series phones. The overview on notifications was great and allowed answering calls without opening the flap while protecting most of the screen. Also the reduced visible screen space did not blast you with light when checking time in the middle of the night.

Allo was the best messenger. So many useful features

FM radio. Also my old Motorola had a "karate-chop to activate camera" which was very useful

The pixel pinch phone body for the Google assistant. Boy how I want that feature badly when I was using OnePlus 3T. It felt like one of those double tap at the back of iphone little niche thing.

I really like since it give the user different kind of input to interact with the phone quickly. We have the double tap and holding for power button, double tap the top of the screen, the screenshot combo button and etc. Same like the interface for controlling your wireless earbud.

The pain for installation/maintenance/replacement for that input must be a nightmare though.

I have a samsung flip. I cannot tell you how much I love this phone.

the IR Blaster, absolutely loved it and still do

Folding phones.

I was so skeptical at first, and even now it seems most people still are. It's a complete game changer though. There's almost nothing I can't do on my phone anymore, due to the multitasking and the larger screen. I can comfortably use desktop websites when necessary for banking etc. I have watched many dozens of movies and tv shows on it. It's just nicer for reading and browsing the web, and makes your phone feel so much more powerful to have the tablet form factor. I've actually been travelling for over a month with no laptop, just my Fold and a Steam deck.

I'm also appreciating having what is essentially a 5G-connected tablet where in the past I've always dismissed the LTE-connected ipads as a gimmick. It's hard to justify paying extra for the device and then a monthly fee, but now that I have it I can definitely see the appeal of a tablet that just works anywhere you go. Except since it folds you can put it in your pocket too.

Idk if this counts as i dont really involve myself in a lot of discussion, but MAN do i miss two button navigation. it may still be present in some other Android distros but on Graphene an update removed it for me a while ago.