technology

• A good operating system. (Sadly both Android and iOS are shit nowadays.)
• Cheap price. I'm thinking.... $200 USD max!
• Bend resistance. Bending (even non deformation) is insidious as those stresses can break electrical connections on PCBs and stuff. It's a big reason we use underfill.
• Good security. Yes I consider me losing my data if I forget the password to be a green flag. Cryptography is a wonderful thing!
• VoLTE support.
• Headphone jack.
• SIM card slot. (I hate how that's something I have to ask for now. What is this? 2005 where CDMA phones were still a sizable chunk of the masses?)
• Two sdcard slots. One inside the sim tray. The other sits behind a flap. The one behind the flap is for shuffling files between places.
• USB-C. With power delivery and video output. Probably wouldn't ever use the video output, but I have a USB-C dock with an HDMI port, you never know if I'd use it.
• Trusted Platform Module. Or, well, on iOS devices it's called the "secure enclave". It's the hardened microcontroller core shoved inside the SOC that stores and manages cryptographic stuff. Like password keychains! And two factor authentication stuff! And it's hardened against hardware attacks!
• Competent camera. Doesn't need to be anything wiz-bang. It needs to be able to produce usable photos under crappy levels of light. I take a lot of reference photos. I don't need that "The viewfinder looks crisp when you press the shutter but the resulting photo is blurred from the phone shifting slightly" crap.
• Image stabilization for the cameras. I also kinda just have shakey hands.
• Wireless charging. Not because I'd constantly use it, but because charging ports eventually wear out and fail.
• Cold swappable batteries. -Unlockable bootloader.

......Imagine being a worker at a mobile phone service retailer. Most of the costumers who come in ask about reasonable stuff like nice screens and lots of storage.

And then one day some autistic trans woman comes in and she's inquirying about bootloaders, USB Video Device Class support, NAND encryption, etc. A bunch of hidden/mundane features. The "not flashy" stuff.

And the worker who's there is just like "By god what drugs is this woman on?"