The "bare minimum for a non-disposable, consumer friendly, half environmentally responsible phone" starter pack.

Also the custom ROM ability should not be merely a bonus. IMO it needs to be legally mandatory even above standardised charging connectors. It costs effectively nothing to implement because the base OS and general architecture supports it by default, the manufacturer simply needs to not disable it, and it is by far the most important thing for keeping a device from becoming unusable and possibly even a cybersecurity risk with age. Also just in principle, I paid for the hardware I should be able to put my own software on it.

Bring back the IR blaster. No one apparently misses it but me.

My Xperia phone has all of these except the removable battery. I think the EU is legislating removable batteries be brought back to phones so given another year or two I'd expect to start seeing them again.

That was the note 3 for me except for the compact size. I had a 10,000 mah upgraded battery in it. Thing was a brick but could last a 2-3 days on a full charge, cant get even one fully day on my oneplus 8t :/

Almost all of the people I know who bitch about these features being gone never really utilized them in the first place. Quite frankly I think it’s more about being contrarian than anything.

Virtually no one I know carried around multiple batteries or needed more storage. The only people I knew who carried around multiple batteries were people who worked in carriers where easy access to charging wasn’t available. Phone storage is so large now it’s not really believable really anyone needs expandable storage. Hell, I have a 128gb iPhone with literally thousands of pictures and videos going all the way back to 2012, audio books, and digital books on it and still have room to spare. Sure there’s going to be the rare exception, but those people are the outliers not everyone else.

Wired headphones, I literally can’t tell the difference in sound quality between my AirPods and wired earbuds, and again, neither can most people. Bluetooth earbuds are SO convenient. They literally make some things so much easier and in some scenarios safer.