(ThyBlackMan.com) For a long time now, smartphones have become one of the things that we rely upon. Without smartphones, our lives feel incomplete. And as smartphones evolve so do the features that come with them. Some of the features stick around for a long time while some of them start trending down due to the lack of popularity and usefulness, while some features just become obsolete with time.
Now, we have seen a lot of smartphone features coming up and phasing off over the years for various reasons. These days, all the phones look the same. But in the past, we used phones such as Nokia with so many different design choices but now those models have become old and outdated. The same happened with smartphone features as well.
So, let’s take a look at the 10 smartphone features that we don’t see anymore or no longer exist in the smartphone market.
- Physical keypads
All the phones had physical keypads back in the day when touch screens were not that common. We used to have Blackberries, Palm Pre and such other phones that dominated the smartphone industry. Physical keypads were the trend of the period. But with the evolution of technology and the introduction of touch screen concepts in Android phones, this type of keypad feature slowly phased out.
- FM transmitter
Well, this was a feature on many phones and was available mostly in mid-range phones. The FM transmitter feature allowed your phone to broadcast your music on an FM frequency of your choice and it seemed to be a fascinating feature during that time. You just had to enable the feature by enabling the FM Radio option and plugging in the earphones.
- Trackballs/ Trackpads
The rise of touch screens saw some more features getting phased off – trackballs and trackpads. Trackballs were a very useful feature when smartphones did not have touchscreens and it was an important source of navigation for the users. It was faster, accurate and easy to use. Similar to the physical keyboard, trackpads and trackballs were there for a while and many early Android phones had a touchscreen and a touching ball including the T-Mobile G1 and the first Nexus phone, the Nexus One.
- Xenon Flash
We saw the first Xenon Flash in Nokia with the N82 release, and later, other smartphones including the Nokia 808 Pureview, Lumia 1020, Nokia N8, Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom started using Xenon flash. It was used for photography purposes and it is way better than the LEDs that most smartphones have. The Xenon Flash was better in a way that the lighting was better and that’s why it is still used in many professional cameras. It would be really good to see Xenon implemented in future smartphones because it is better than the LED.
- Front-facing speakers
Talking about front-facing speakers, the first smartphone brand that comes to mind is HTC because they were among the first to introduce front-facing speakers back in 2013. That time we saw more companies adopting this feature. Motorola launched the Nexus 6 and then Huawei built the Nexus 6P, with front-facing speakers. There are some companies that still use front-facing speakers, but you will hardly find this feature in new smartphones.
- Removable batteries
More or less, removable batteries are going out of trend now. For a very long time, two tech giants, Samsung and LG stuck with the removable battery concept but the transition to unibody designs has almost put an end to the removable batteries.
- Headphone jack
The removal of the headphone jack is becoming quite the trend these days, though there are still a lot of smartphones with the headphone jack. The reason behind it is the creation of the USB type C that is the one port for everything. Now it’s only a matter of time until all the smartphone manufacturers will start following the trend.
- IR blaster
IR blaster was an interesting feature because it introduced people to a new way of controlling their television sets. This feature was used by many OEMs including Samsung, HTC, and LG many years ago. IR blasters added a certain level of usefulness to smartphones but we have to agree that it is still a relatively old technology as even those who liked the idea of replacing their TV remote control with a smartphone can now use Wi-Fi connections as smart TVs are now available.
- Stereoscopic 3D
What about this feature? Smartphones like the HTC EVO 3D and the LG Thrill tried hands on this feature but this trend did not last for a long time. This feature was an attempt to create an immersive three-dimensional viewing experience for smartphone users by using a 3D display and dual cameras that captured 3D pictures.
- DVB-H receivers
This feature used to be available on many Nokia phones. Digital Video Broadcasting is a technology used to bring broadcasting services to our mobile phones. You could watch satellite TV on your mobile phones with the help of this feature. It was an amazing feature at that time. You could find this feature on Nokia N96, Nokia N8, and several other smartphones of that era.
Staff Writer; Corey Shaw
Have any Tech Tips? News? Hit up our Tech Guru at; CoreyS@ThyBlackMan.com
