Flagship phones are slowly losing all the useful features, while we’re paying more and more for them

Seriously, it’s getting ridiculous. The latest flagship phones are ditching pretty much everything we used to take for granted. No more SD card slots (okay, maybe understandable with 512 GB or 1 TB of internal storage), but even on 256 GB models, there’s often just a hybrid SIM/SD slot if any at all. And of course, the headphone jack is long gone - “wireless future” and “space-saving” reasons - while plenty of people still prefer wired headphones for latency or just better sound quality.

I could live with this if they gave us some real improvements in exchange, but nope. Same compromises year after year, just repackaged.

And on top of that, features keep disappearing from the box too. Nowadays, with a €1500 phone, you’re lucky if you get anything beyond a charging cable. No wall adapter, no earbuds, no case, sometimes not even a decent manual. All “for the environment,” while forcing customers to buy those extras separately — often at a premium.

What’s worse? In many cases, mid-range phones have more practical features than the flagship models. They still include headphone jacks, SD card slots, bigger batteries, sometimes even FM radio. Some even throw in a case in the box.

So yeah... they call it progress, but it often feels more like a step backward.