We asked, you told us: There's one smartphone feature you'd resurrect

Today’s high-end smartphones tick loads of boxes, but they’ve also lost several features over the years. Whether it’s microSD support, a 3.5mm port, or a physical keypad, modern flagship phones are left wanting in some ways.

But which feature would Android Authority readers resurrect if they could only pick one? That was the topic of a poll article earlier this week, and here are the results.

Which smartphone feature would you resurrect?

Results

The poll accrued over 4,000 votes, making for a huge sample size. And it turns out that the single most popular feature to resurrect is a removable battery, with 36% of respondents choosing this option. There are plenty of upsides to this feature, allowing you to swap out a battery in seconds instead of waiting for a charge. This feature is also useful if you need to replace your battery after a few years, as you don’t need to have it replaced by professionals.

In second place is a microSD card slot, garnering ~23% of the vote. This is a great pick too, as microSD cards are very cheap and storage expansion reduces the need to offload to cloud storage. It could also be handy if your phone dies, allowing you to retrieve some data.

More reading: The best phones with a removable battery

Rounding out the top three is a 3.5mm port, earning 22.85% of the vote. This is one of the most high-profile omissions in the last five or six years, with everyone from Samsung and Apple to Xiaomi and OnePlus skipping the audio port. A 3.5mm port would allow users to listen to music via legacy wired accessories (no battery needed), while also enabling aux cord functionality.

In fourth and fifth spots were the IR blaster (9.23%) and physical keypad (4.26%) respectively. Meanwhile, the “other” option got 4% of the vote, with comments pointing to features like front-facing stereo speakers, a rear fingerprint scanner, flat screens, FM radio, and MST.

Comments

• Dick B: Dual, front-firing speakers.
• Durandal_1707: Not having that stupid shatter-prone glass on the back.
• EeZeEpEe: Removable battery for sure. Nothing beats instant 100% after turning it back on.
• steelew: Rear finger print scanner. The in-display version doesn’t work when my hands are dry. I honestly wish I could have both front and rear for convenience (to not only use when the front scanner fails but also for gestures). Removable battery is ties or close 2nd for me
• Brian Fowler: I would also bring back slightly larger bezels in order to get rid of notch or punch hole cameras. Or the second screen at the top of the V20 (and I think V10) that both completely hid the camera and gave you a bit of useful features.
• SyCoREAPER: No discussion. Removable battery. No more needing to upgrade because you have a potato that doesn’t hold a charge. Not to mention less ewaste and chip manufacturing could catch up.
• Stephen Wheatley: Flat SCREENS…what what on earth is the point of a CURVED edge screen ?!?!?!?!
• alwin: It was only popular for about a year, but I really miss the trend of pop-up selfie cameras. For someone who doesn’t take all that many selfies it was amazing to be able to have that completely uninterrupted display!
• Jason Wihardja: FM Radio. I live in a third world country where analog radio is still a thing
• ChandyTech: MST of Samsung phones, in use it everyday in my s7 hope they bring it back and make available to other phones as well.. Countries like India and other developing nations haven’t fully adapted the NFC based POS devices
• meh…: I have resorted to bringing a bluetooth keyboard now, because I can’t stand software keyboards. So I think it’s obvious that I would be more interested in having a full hardware keyboard like that of old BlackBerry phones. Man, I miss my BlackBerry Keyboard.