Headphone jack needing to be waterproofed is a bit of a lie, as there have been IP68 phones with a headphone jack. It's simply wanting to cut down on prices.
Another argument against SD cards is that a lot of stuff people do on their phones requires a certain baseline performance, e.g. 4K60 video recording, burst photography etc.
Other stuff like fast loading of apps from disk isn’t necessarily required, but reflects poorly on the phone if it’s slow. It could also cause issues for games which might expect to be able to stream a lot of data from disk.
Of course, it’s perfectly possible to buy SD cards which are plenty fast enough to support this stuff but:
a. SD card speed classes are a bit of a nightmare even for techy people
b. 99% of people will just buy the cheapest card they can find on eBay, which is likely to be some knock-off crap
Throw in the fact that no expandable storage forces people into a purchase-time upgrade with a hefty markup applied and it’s not hard to imagine why it’s all but disappeared.
I am definitely on the cynical side of thinking that it was just marketing spin to justify taking away features to increase profits.
I'm especially curious how rain has damaged phones - I use them in Ireland where you can just say "scattered showers" and have a 50% chance of an accurate forecast. Never thought twice about using any in the rain, and never bought a "waterproof" phone. I always assumed the puddle/pool scenario was what the waterproofing fuss was. Or are people using phones in hurricanes or monsoons or something?
I don't know about those, but we get fairly heavy rainfall every now and then here in Norway. The kind where your underwear gets soaking wet for no other reason than being outside.
I keep my phone in the front pocket of my pants, and after losing two phones to such events I decided that was enough for me.
Now I can check when the bus is due or take that call even if it's raining (heavy or not) and I don't have to think about it.
>IR Blaster The IR blaster is one of the most used apps on my V20. It can control anything from my circa-1980s stereo system to my modern surround sound AVR. And all without any proprietary apps which never get updated or having to connect to WiFi! I've put all my remotes in a drawer and forgot about them because I can do it all from my phone. I think this feature would get a lot more use if it was included on more phones, considering an IR LED is about $0.01 to include. Why do "smart" devices resort to overcomplicated and insecure Bluetooth/WiFi control interfaces when we had this problem solved since the 80s?
Waterproofing is a poor excuse. Most phones that removed these features are not waterproof. Samsung themselves proved that you can have all these things in a waterproof phone with the Galaxy S5.
(Almost?) all Xiaomi phones still have an IR blaster, which is a pretty big share of the the overall market. Some Huawei models do, too.
> removable batteries
Those usually require relatively flimsy backs that slide fit onto the phone. This has problems with water proofing and it's a part that can wear and eventually fit poorly or fall off. It's a lot easier to waterproof/resist a phone when you can seal the whole back of the phone off from the outside world. It also allows using soft polymer batteries that can eek out a bit more volume without the protective bits removable batteries need to be safe(r) to handle.
On the more cynical side maybe they figured it'd induce people to replace their phones more often though I don't have data showing how much of a factor bad battery is in replacing a phone versus other stuff like better performance or FOMO.
> IR blasters
Honestly don't think I had a phone with one of these since my Palm Centro in high school and college and I don't think I ever used the IR feature on there. The only real use I see is slow data transfers (better accomplished with Bluetooth now) and controlling TVs. The latter isn't a huge draw for most people I bet because people generally either have one remote (that more often can control everything if setup properly either through ARC and HDMI control signals or the cable box remote also sending the TV signals when needed) or many remotes and are willing to spend money on a nicer universal like a Harmony. There's probably still some out there today but it seems like an extra part that most people won't care about so the extra fractions of a cent + to include it gets wiped out to increase profits over a few million phones.
> SD cards
This one is maybe a little more cynical. There's some justification for reducing the number of intrusions in the waterproofing seals and increasing the internal volume available to squeeze more battery in. I think another reason is to induce people to buy the more expensive version of a phone. If you include SD card expansion storage it's harder to upsell people on the larger more expensive storage options because usually SD cards are cheaper than the equivalent sized storage in a phone
> headphone jacks
This one I think is a mixed bag. Including the jack sets some hard design limits on the shape of the edge of the phone and it's a pretty large hole to plug against water and other intrusions. I think Apple might have had more coldly calculated reasons for doing it with the close launch of their own AirPods. Some phone companies have similar offerings where you could see a calculated plan to increase profits.
I think we're maybe also just reaching the more mature phase of the smartphone design. There's a basic set of features most people care about and optimizing for that pushes companies in a pretty similar direction. There's some margin for small experimentation around the edges but those induce compromises in the core features people judge on so that limits the market and profit of making those choices.
There's technology like foldable screens that might shake things up but they're pretty new with some big compromises at the moment so they haven't really hit the core incentives and forces that are corralling phones into the same tight design and feature list.