My parents still have cable. The buttons are backlit, they turn on when you pick it up and turn off when you set it down. There’s also a mic button you can hold down and talk to input text by voice instead of typing on a virtual keyboard with a dpad. Not rechargeable but two AAs last for a year so why bother with a battery that eventually fails and renders the remote useless?
Even basic remotes are pretty clever now
There’s a big chunk of the Linux community that will always want to gatekeep it and push out anything that makes it easier for the layman to use