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No Physical Keyboard Options
When you spend top dollar on a phone, you might reasonably expect that you’re getting all the bells and whistles. That’s not the case. There’s quite a bit now that you’re more likely to find on a budget or mid-range phone than a $1200 flagship.
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No Headphone Jack
The removal of the headphone jack is one of those acts of betrayal seared into the memory of those of us who lived through it, like the shutdown of Google Reader. Here was a feature common to every portable electronic device from the Sony Walkman to the Nintendo Game Boy. The ability to use any old pair of wired headphones or earbuds you had lying around was simply a fact of how handheld gadgets with audio worked.
These days, you won’t find that port on an iPhone. You won’t find it on a Samsung Galaxy S25 or the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Google Pixel phones? They don’t have them either.
If you want a headphone jack, you need to look to budget phones or niche devices like the Minimal Phone. And that’s not all these devices are more likely to have.
- Brand
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Minimal Company
- SoC
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MediaTek Helio G99
- Battery
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3000mAh
- Ports
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USB-C, 3.5mm jack, dual SIM
The Minimal Phone is a smartphone running a full version of Android on an E-Paper display. The phone also packs a 35-button keyboard, expanding its appeal beyond those looking to reduce phone addiction and reclaim their focus. It also makes for a nice pocket eReader.
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No Expandable Storage
A phone with a microSD card slot is a phone with up to 2TB of storage. Phones used to offer to format this memory as internal storage, storing apps there like a Nintendo Switch stores games. Even when unformatted, you’re still left with a cheap way to store many years’ worth of photos and video.
Flagship phones don’t offer expandable storage anymore. If you want more physical storage space, that’s an upcharge likely to cost you hundreds more on top of the hundreds you’re already spending.
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Slower Charging
Apple and Samsung are dominant here in the US. Google comes in a distant third. All three offer charging speeds that are underwhelming to what you can find in cheaper phones from OnePlus and Motorola. My Galaxy Z Fold 6 tops out at 25-watt charging, and it takes around an hour to juice up my phone. This year’s model isn’t significantly faster.
My Moto Edge+ 2023 cost a quarter of the sticker price (since I bought both phones open box or second-hand, the delta for me was much smaller), and it could charge in half the time. That’s thanks to 68W charging. You can drop a similar OnePlus phone onto a charger as you enter the shower and have complete confidence you’ll make it through the day when you hop out.
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No Physical Keyboard Options
Most phones, whether flagship or budget, don’t have a physical keyboard anymore. But there are niche options out there that do. The Minimal Phone is the most well-known example, though if you aren’t drawn to an E-Ink display, the Unihertz Titan 2 is a better example. Both look like modern takes on the classic Blackberry.
The physical keyboard shows little signs of making a resurgence. Many of us have adapted quite well to visual keyboards, and a growing number of us have grown up with them as our default keyboards. I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve personally come to prefer a virtual keyboard over a physical one—and I mean full-sized desktop ones. But there’s something special about the tangible feel of physical buttons on a phone that it would be nice if at least one flagship presented the option without having to resort to accessories like the Clicks keyboard case.
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eSIM-Only
This trend hasn’t completely taken over yet, but it’s growing. iPhones are ESIM-only in the US, and starting this year, so are Google Pixel phones. I’m nervous that by the time I’m ready to replace my Galaxy Z Fold 6, whatever model is available at the time will have also followed suit.
There are benefits to eSIMs, to be sure, but there are downsides as well. They create friction when trying to switch between phones, which I have to do now often than most a a phone reviewer, but which I also like being able to do for peace of mind. If I shatter my phone on the drive way walking to my car, I can pop the SIM card into a spare old phone and be back on my feet until my main phone is fixed. Not so simple with eSIM.
Does this mean you’re better off not buying a flagship? Not necessarily. Rather, it means that if you want a headphone jack, foldable storage, or a physical keyboard, you’re going to have to do without the most powerful professors and the best cameras. You’ll have to accept trade-offs no matter how much you spend. For the foreseeable future, there’s no option to have it all.