In my view mobile devices in general have regressed in a lot of major ways even though I still enjoy using them.

• Battery Life - There has been some improvement in this area as of recently but in general battery life is pretty terrible on modern smartphones.
• Cameras - Most smartphones have pretty basic cameras. Most smartphones only have a single led flash, some don't even have a flash. Dual led flashes are little bit better but nothing compares to a true xenon flash when it comes to low light performance. It can also be nice to have both led and xenon flashes and to have the ability to switch between either a xenon or led flash. The size of camera lenses haven't really gotten bigger and have in fact gotten smaller while megapixels have increased. Camera lense covers are even rarer than the other mentioned features. Shutter buttons are a real time saver and most phones simply don't have them unfortunately. True optical zoom is also very rare on smartphones, optical zoom preserves quality as one zooms. Nokia pureview devices while better than most devices lack optical zoom and lense covers. In my view the best camera phone was the Sony Ericsson Satio which took great pictures and had all the features I mentioned, maybe one day Sony will release an Android based successor. Some Android devices from Samsung and polaroid check all the necessary boxes like the Galaxy Camera but have limited availability. Tablets almost universally have bad cameras with no flashes and the lowest possible quality, a camera on a tablet can be useful when no other devices are with you or for taking notes during class. I do realize that not everyone desires those features but many people do desire those features. Even though imaging has gotten worse video recording is much better than used to be in terms of both quality and resolution. Having a good camera on either a tablet or a phone is useful so you don't carry an extra device and dedicated are easily forgetable.
• Os performance - Modern Mobile oses are real hogs when it comes to performance and usage of computing resources. Whenever I use an Android device, almost half of the ram is used by the os and the Android os takes up about as much space as a install of desktop linux. You can still get bad performance even on the most modern of devices. Older oses ran very well on very limited hardware and reaped the full benefits of performance increases, Windows mobile 6.5 (not phone!) ran really well of 1st generation snapdragons as well as older devices and Symbian ran really well on the omap 3 platform as well ad older devices. Ubuntu touch runs well in real world use but has very high system requirements. Windows 8 runs well on smaller tablets but in practice uses almost all the built in storage. BlackBerry 10 is overall the best in terms of both real world performance and optimization of performance in my experience. Even though modern oses are more resource hungry they aren't much more functional than older oses.
• Desktop Syncing - This feature is terribly implemented by all mobile oses and it is one of the most ultra basic. With every Android device I have owned I have errors simply transferring files becomes a choor because of issues detecting my device, I have had problems of multiple versions of Android and on Windows, linux, and mac. On macs Android devices simply won't show up in many cases. On linux Android devices show up when connected but can have errors like it suddenly not working. With iPhones itunes is generally a terrible program with alternatives available. BlackBerry 10 devices are the worst and will allow file transfers on linux if you connect a bb10 device as a SMB device. Windows Mobile devices and Palm os devoces implemented this feature perfectly, they each had their own desktop suites with available alternatives thst could manage everything on your device such as contacts, emails and what have you. Palm os and Windows Mobile generally didn't have errors with file transfers. I don't get why such a basic feature is so poorly implemented.
• SD Card Support - Most devices come with a sd card slot but software wise the feature is poorly implemented. The apps 2 sd feature has been enabled and disabled many times by google with various versions of Android with overall software level support in general being basic. Some apps on Android can be put on the SD card, but many can't and in some cases apps can't even read data from the SD card. Newer versions of Android habe partially addressed this but it remains a problem. SD cards are especially useful with large games and media files. The implementation is similar with Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 which is to say inconsistent and limited. Windows Mobile 6.5 or older implemented the feature very well, in general all apps could be installed on either the internal or external storage and one could choose during installation. This is not really a hardware but a software problem.
• TV Out - There is very little standardization here and there are often scaling issues due to significant differences between the resolution and aspect ratios of tvs and mobile devices. There are many competing standards such as mhl, Samsungs own standard, micro hdmi, mini hdmi, proprietary port to hdmi and in some rare cases full hdmi.
• Stylus support - On a software level there are many great applications for both Windows and Android that take advantage of a stylus or digitizer but the number of devices available with it are limited, I always make a tablet buying decision based on whether a stylus. Hopefully more devices in the future have it.

I have to dissagree with your thread and with that wall of text. Did you know how phones worked, 10 or 20 years ago?

The only one I could partly agree with you in this thread is the battery life. But the screen was so small back then so...

If you have some new devices I can trade it for some old ones if you prefer it.

I gotta agree, the modern mobile device world has turned into a monoculture. Ten years ago, there were simple cellphones, "smart" phones, PIMs, MP3 players, hand-held PCs, and all manner of other varied machines. Now, everything is either an iPhone, or an iPhone-wannabe.

I suppose it is nice to have a decent all-in-one device, but man, I don't want it at the cost of losing all the specialized devices. The iPhone is a jack of all trades, but master of none...

I fully agree with you on the battery life. My last smartphone before my N900 lasted 9-10 days on a single charge, with heavy daily use. It was powered by Palm OS, as yet unsurpassed by anything in terms of user friendliness, maturity, stability and, above all, battery life. It was lightning-fast, with no slowdowns at all. All with a 144 MHz CPU and 24 MB memory, shared between RAM and storage. Why are "modern" phones such resource hogs?

Which brings me the thing I find the most sucky about modern IT, desktops or mobiles alike. Why does it take a 3.2 GHz octa-core CPU with 16 GB RAM to do the task I did in 1995 on a 40 MHz CPU with 4 MB RAM? That's the configuration I used then for desktop publishing. The mobile phone I use to type this reply on has a 25x faster CPU, 250x more RAM, and even a slightly better screen than my desktop publishing setup from 1995. So achieving the same job should be a doddle. Why is it not?

EDIT 1
I nearly forgot to mention: Palm OS was also the last one to nail the desktop sync Just Right. Everything I used ever since has/had some issues. Duplicated, deleted or overwritten contacts, lost messages, you name it. Come on, industry, you have a prime example how to do it. Why do you need to keep inventing new things that just Don't Work?

EDIT 2
A special addition for Dave: guess when this marvel of technology I am on about was released? In 2004, a bit over 10 years ago

I think android is getting better, ie lollypop.. more native support.
I'm still on my N900 but have a tablet with android.. not sure when or if I'd switch to it.

Re, SD, TV out... I'm thankfull it's even there.. and paid extra for it

Desktop sync'ing.. pay for an app, that's not really a core feature of a phone IMO.

Battery life is managable, being able to replace a battery myself is not optional for me, I need to know I can do it!

Camera, IMO, having a good camera/flash is a bonus but I don't pick a phone just for it's camera.

Stylus, hmmm.. with the size/res of new phones, I don't think a stylus is reallly needed... not like N900 where you do.

I'm still using my N900 mostly because:
Linux OS
Physical keyboard
little extras: 32g, SD, GPS, FM, camera etc

multitasking, background apps.
Your phone is doing more now then what your PC did 20 years ago.

If your having battery issues, uninstall apps or at least remove them from running in the background and set the phone to battery saving mode, ie no pretty animations

I don't buy that. Computers in 1995 were multitasking too. Neither Unix nor Windows were written last week. The real problem is IMO that even the "lightest" background task running on phone now takes more resources than a fully-blown destop application did 20 years ago.

And that will let me use my Jolla for a week of a heavy daily use on a single charge? I did not even bother to take my charger with me when I went on holiday or business for a week. Now I keep one charger at home and one at work. Because I have to.

Seven posts in and not one mention of the corporate culture surronding modern phones? Step your game up, OP!

I find it unfair on the consumer for people to be forced to buy new phones just to keep up with the latest-and-greatest. While that also rests on the customer's habits and how much of that culture they wanna be a part of, it still ain't right IMHO.

Quick reply...

Sony Ericsson Satio does not have optical zoom, or does it?
There are add-on optical zoom lenses for mobiles-digicams.

I have got to agree, sometimes I want to be able to design an operating system from scratch, to be able to understand every little piece of it, and make sure it is lean and fast.

Best wishes.

You know what else sucks about modern phones?

Durability.

Ever been out-and-about for a case to make sure your phone can survive a 10ft fall to hard ground? Think about that.

And now we have *conspicuously unnamed phones* bending. Alrighty then.