Gadgetory

so as smartphones evolved so do the features that come with them and some stick around for a really long time some disappear because they're not all that popular and some fade away into obscurity because we find better and more efficient ways of doing things so with that being said let's take a look at the top five smartphone features that have either trended down or no longer exist so kicking off the list at number one is the physical keyboard and back one capacitive touchscreens weren't quite as prevalent physical keyboards were everywhere we had BlackBerry's and we also had the t-mobile Sidekick line which was extremely popular and then we had other phones like the Palm Pre but with the introduction of the touchscreen this did have an effect on the existence of physical keyboards now physical keyboards did not disappear right away with the capacitive touchscreen in fact a lot of the really early Android phones had a capacitive touchscreen and a physical keyboard the very first Android phone the t-mobile g1 had a physical keyboard the Motorola Droid series of phones the Samsung Epic 4G Touch for Sprint and a bunch of different other phones had physical keyboards but as capacitive touchscreens got better and the virtual typing experiences on them got better the need for a physical keyboard sort of started to diminish another reason why physical keyboards also disappeared was the race for the thinnest smartphone and as smartphones were getting thinner there just wasn't any room for a physical keyboard so the physical keyboard had to go bye-bye now physical keyboards aren't necessarily dead obviously it's still around one of the more recent Android phones that came out this year the BlackBerry key one has a physical keyboard but I highly doubt that one Android phone with the physical keyboard is all of a sudden going to cause a resurgence in physical keyboards number two is the trackball / trackpad and this was another feature that was very heavily impacted by the existence of the capacitive touchscreen now on a non touchscreen device the trackball was basically your primary source of navigation it was it was quick it was convenient and much faster than using a directional pad now trackballs did not go away entirely when the capacitive touchscreen was introduced they did hang around for a little while the same way physical keyboards hung around for a little while the very first Android phone again the t-mobile g1 had a trackball the very first Nexus phone the Nexus One had a trackball but on a touchscreen device trackballs had a much different purpose your finger became your primary source of navigation and the only time you ever really used a trackball was when your finger just wasn't accurate or precise enough like moving a cursor through a block of text or copying and pasting but eventually software for copying pasting and moving a cursor around got a lot better and the trackball just became a little bit unnecessary now before the trackball disappeared it turned into an optical trackpad because trackballs had a higher rate of failure and we saw trackpads on phones like the Droid Incredible and the HTC legend but eventually this feature went away because capacitive touchscreens were just a lot better a lot easier a lot faster and more convenient next up on the list is front-facing speakers and front-facing speakers still exist so this follows more on D trending down side of things but the first company that you probably think of when you think of front-facing speakers is HTC because they basically pioneered front-facing speakers with the One m7 back in the day and this feature trickled over to the more mid-range desired lineup and then ultimately other OEMs adopted this feature as well we had motorola with the Nexus 6 and then while way the following year with the 6p and then other companies like ZTE what's axon 7 and Alcatel what their Idol series of phones all had front-facing speakers but if you take a look back at the last year-and-a-half or you take a look at 2016 there were more smartphones with single speakers than there were with dual front-facing speakers and even HTC themselves dropped front-facing speakers entirely for a different speaker setup and I think one of the biggest reasons why front-facing speakers haven't exactly exploded in the smartphone world is because a lot of the really big name om never adopted this feature at all Samsung LG and if you want to throw in Apple none of these companies ever took on front-facing eaters on any of their smartphones and if they did front-facing speakers definitely would have been a lot bigger now it is possible that front-facing speakers may be trending upwards because there are rumors that the pixel too will have front-facing speakers but as of right now front-facing speakers are definitely not as common as we thought they initially were going to be number four is removable batteries and removable batteries have more or less gone the way of the dinosaurs Samsung and LG held on to this feature for a really long time but the unibody design trend eventually took over and put an end to the removable battery now if you dig really deep and you look at super super cheap budget Android phones you can probably still find a smart phone with a removable battery but for the most part it really no longer exists another reason why this trend has gone away is because a lot of phones now are water and dust resistant and it's a lot easier to make a phone with a unibody design water and dust tight versus a phone with a removable back and battery now it is possible to make those phones water and dust resistant as well because Samsung did do it with the Galaxy s5 and the s4 active but there's a higher chance of failure with those phones because they can come apart and Samsung actually did have that issue with the s4 active now one of the biggest benefits of having a removable battery is that you can easily swap in a fresh one and instantly get a full charge but with technologies like fast charging getting better and better and battery packs becoming a dime a dozen having this feature on smartphones isn't really necessary anymore last but not least is the headphone jack and the removal of the headphone jack has been quite the hot topic and while there's still a lot of smart phones out there with a headphone jack it's hard to deny that this feature is trending down one of the biggest reasons for this is because of USB type-c USB type-c is supposed to be our one and only port for everything and a lot of OEMs have already maybe transitioned away from the headphone jack Apple being one of the biggest and most obvious ones but we also have companies like HTC and Motorola and it's only a matter of time before other big-name OMS like Samsung and LG follow suit there's also some pretty heavy rumors right now that Google is going to be removing the headphone jack from the next pixel and if a big company like Google is removing the headphone jack that's only going to further solidify that the headphone jack is slowly being phased out so that rounds out the top five list but this list would not be complete without some honorable mentions remember the IR blaster the IR blaster used to be on a ton of smart phones Samsung LG and HTC all used IR blasters but now none of these companies use our blasters so rest in peace to the IR blaster it was fun while it lasted but now you're nothing but a blast from the past remember phones with stereoscopic 3d like the HTC EVO 3d or the LG thrille these phones actually had 3d displays and they had dual cameras on the back before Google cameras was even a thing to capture 3d images and these phones came out when 3d was really booming at the time there was a lot of 3d movies coming out in theaters there was also a lot of 3d TV so I guess smart phone om thought to be a good idea to bring this technology to smart phones and it turned out to be one of the biggest flops in smartphone history and it pretty much disappeared about as fast as it was introduced but that's going to do it for this video guys let us know your thoughts down any comments section below what smartphone features you wish were more popular and what smartphone features you wish still existed in smartphones today and if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up we definitely appreciate it subscribe to this channel if you haven't already so don't miss out on future videos and hit that notification bell while you're at it and check us out on social media instagram twitter snapchat google+ all that good stuff will be linked down below and shape a website as well and jordan thority calm because we are your source for all things Android