I’m a long-time small phone Android user. But after the Pixel 5, I have not been able to find a suitable small Android replacement. The Pixel 6 is gigantic, and the Pixel 7 looks like it is also destined to be huge. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve resorted to using an iPhone Mini, biding my time and hoping desperately that some Android OEM would step up.
But it’s increasingly clear that a small premium phone is not on the roadmap. So I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. My goal with https://smallandroidphone.com is to rally other fans of small phones together and put pressure on Google/Samsung/Anyone to consider making a small phone.
I have a very specific set of skills and industry connections that I have acquired over a long career in the hardware business (my first startup was Pebble). I will put them to use in our shared quest to get the perfect small Android phone. If no one else builds one, and enough people sign up...maybe I will be forced to make it myself.
If you want a small premium Android phone, this may be your last chance (ever?) to help bring back the phone category that we love.
With each generational increase of display size, The number of times I drop the phone over its lifetime increases proportionally. I've used android phones from 2.8" to 5.7" display as daily drivers over the past decade.
I assume, Many with small hands(palms) do face the issue of dropping phones, So I finding it quite surprising that 'Easily Repairable' wasn't included in neither 'Must have' nor 'Nice to have'.
Repairability is so important to me that, I have stopped buying new smartphones since 2017. My last/current phone has full-metal construction, is easily repairable, has security updates(sans proprietary blobs) via LineageOS and I'm planning to switch to a postmarketOS device from near-same generation for better security(Only bootloader is proprietary).
IMO in the age of Fairphone, there's no excuse for a non easily-repairable phone; Especially one which has community interests in mind. I wish you the best on this endeavor.
I’m not a dwarf, but I do have smaller than average hands and really struggle to type on a phone one handed. I dropped my phone a lot trying to balance it.
Have you come across pop sockets? Small collapsible self-adhesive handles for the back of your phone. They’ve made an absolutely massive usability difference to my phone usage (although I aim for the smallest handset I can get without compromising too much on quality anyway). Total game changer
I tried pop sockets on the phones of my friends, my fingers are too small and stubby that I felt I would drop the phone more by fiddling with it so I didn't use them.
Btw checkout Swiftkey's one-hand mode for typing, If you haven't already.
Welcome, I assumed everyone knows about it here hence I didn't include much details about it[1].
Fairphone, Founded on the principles of ethical consumerism have consistently delivered on their promises which by itself is an extraordinary feat in the world of smartphones (or) consumer electronics in general.
Occasional but common criticisms on their devices from HN include specs not being competitive with flagships and build quality not up to expected levels(But newer devices have got good feedbacks on the build quality).
They are only available in EU + few other countries, If you don't live in their supported countries list then getting their phone might not be advisable as getting the parts easily for repair is their main USP(Besides telecom radio support).
So if you use phone as a utility and not as sustenance then Fairphone is a good choice if you can get it, Besides money goes to a socially-invested business.
Yes, I'm as frustrated as you are. I want a no-compromise 4" Android phone, comfortably usable with one hand. For me, the phone is a communication device for the outside, that's it. I hardly use it at home except for calls. My primary device is my laptop. I have exactly zero use cases that would benefit from a large screen, yet all of my use cases would benefit from being able to fully use it one-handed. I don't watch any kind of video on my phone because it's a torture either way, and I'm okay with smaller fonts to make more things fit on a smaller screen.
It's gotten so bad I contemplated porting Android to the iPhone SE. Not the complete OS, just the userspace, enough to run SystemUI and apps.
Except: a headphone jack is a hard requirement. If a phone has no headphone jack, it could as well not exist for me.
Very much the same situation for me. I'm especially interested in why Eric doesn't mention the headphone jack -- does he simply think it isn't a noteworthy feature, and assume the phone WILL have the jack? Or does he assume that bluetooth is the future and only silly luddites like us care about the jack?
I hope Eric eases up on the weirdly specific requirements, like dual rear cameras, symmetrical bezels, and a punchout front camera, and refocuses on features that make or break the phone to end users.
I agree that the requirements should be pared down to the absolute least common denominator, but disagree that the headphone jack belongs in that category. You (and GP) surely have to recognize that at this point requiring a headphone jack is also a niche request.
The fact that the lack of a headphone jack was normalized by Apple with the release of an iPhone 7 doesn't mean it's any less of a nonsensical idea. Unlike storage media, wireless can't supersede wired simply because each of these options has its own strengths and weaknesses and whether one is better than the other is highly subjective.
Everyone I know gets annoyed from time to time that their modern phones lack the jack.
A lot of people are willing to go without it because practically nobody makes smartphones with the jack any more. But given the choice of a phone with, say, 2% less battery and a jack vs. a phone with a slightly bigger battery and slightly better waterproofing... I'm pretty confident what more users would choose.
Uhhhh no. Most phones lack headphone jacks these days, so of course the ones that still have them would sell "worse". The same can be said about screen sizes, there are no new phones smaller than 5" "because no one buys them". Of course no one buys something that no one sells.
The best-selling mid-range phone in the world was the Samsung A51 if I'm not mistaken. I have one and it has a headphone jack. It's only the highest-end phones and tablets that don't have it.
No. This software-controlled madness susceptible to interference from microwaves can't possibly be a replacement for just plugging things in. It's literally a Rube Goldberg machine for sending an audio signal between two devices that are a meter apart.
I'd love a microSD card slot as well. I suspect, though, that it's less popular a feature than the headphone jack. Until 2016, almost every single smartphone had a headphone jack. Maybe 50% of phones at best had microSD card slots.
That being said... the Xperia compact series is all the proof you need that a small phone can have it all. Good battery life, flagship camera (though understandably you won't have as many sensors as a giant phone), a headphone jack, a microSD card, good battery life, waterproofing, a fingerprint sensor...
It's such a shame that people continually insist that technology we HAD in 2012-2016 is impossible today. All I want is an Xperia Z3 Compact with modern bands and software support.
Hey! I got the Z3 Compact as well. Besides the medicore camera, it was a great device! Too bad mine died with some crappy Google app update (constant reboot loop). Happened on my Shield Tablet as well...
The USB-C-to-3.5mm dongles are bothersome, but they're not that bad. You buy one for each headphone you use, and expect to replace each of them once or twice a year. It sucks, but it has stopped the headphone jack being a /hard requirement/ and instead a nice-to-have.
1. I already have nice earphones, I don't want to spend another $200-$250 for no reason (the going price of most wireless earbuds I've been interested in)
2. Way lower latency than bluetooth.
3. I have too many things to charge as it is. The reduced anxiety of having 1 less device to charge is worth something to me. I know USB-C to 3.5mm dongles exist, but a headphone jack is still better.
4. I oppose the idea of companies artificially taking out basic hardware features (that we've always had for 10+ years) just so they can force more disposable consumer goods to their users year after year.
Because I own nice headphones that I like to listen with, I like that they never run out, I like that I can plug them between my phone and my computer as I please instead of praying to the fickle bluetooth gods that they will sync.
It's not that I have never owned wireless headphones, in fact I am literally forced against my will to own and use them and am wearing them as I type. They have some convenience, but adding a headphone jack doesn't mean not being able to use bluetooth headphones - I should just be able to use both.
>>These days there are very good wireless earbuds.
Yes, and now I ended up in an idiotic situation where I have to have a pair for every device I own, because switching bluetooth connections is an unbelivable pain in the ass. No such problems with wired - you only need one pair, you plug them in, they work, end of story.
Not to mention issues like audio sync, which is just broken as hell. As an example, using top of the line headphones(sony MX4s) + a top of the line phone(Galaxy S21), audio isn't in sync with anything other than youtube. Playing games? Enjoy hearing your shots 1s after you fire them. And using them with windows? Now everything is slightly out of sync, because windows is a flaming pile of garbage when it comes to bluetooth audio.
Yes, there are ways to extract signal from almost anything.
Eavesdropping on either the output of the headphones or the audio data before it leaves the computer/phone is the same for wired vs Bluetooth. The latter seems to be the mode used in the (pretty coo) hack you posted - it's software attacking the Realtek chip, which must be driven by the wire, so exploiting the quasi-equivalence/reversability of speakers/microphones and the back signal from the speaker diaphragms.
This still requires access to get malware onto the device itself, and I'm more considering 'drive-by' or remote attacks in my comment.
To do this against a ~1m wire with millivolt signals without putting a clamp around the wire seems pretty tough in contrast to cracking a signal that is explicitly broadcast with not great security. Not only that, while eavesdropping the signals on the headphone wires will yield only a conversation in the room, which can be much more easily gathered directly, cracking a Bluetooth 2-way comms channel will yield much greater access to the device.
For most of us, neither is a concern, but it certainly is for people who do have real security needs, e.g., I've read that the current VPOTUS specifically uses wired headphones for this reason. Many people who also work with Classified information, Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), or just with business security issues have the same need. Failing to produce a device with this capability is a failure to address a key and leading market.
Just to get the same audio quality in BT earbuds are going to set you (me) back 10x more compared to wired ones. And then what all the sibling comments said.
Thank you for taking initiative on this! As a 5'5" woman with small hands, I haven't had an android phone that I could use with one-hand since my Nexus 5 (which I used for 5 years straight). The current android flagships are unwieldy even with two-hands for me, and it's been just a quality of living downgrade ever since my Nexus 5 broke. I'm not into apple products myself, but I know many other women swear by the iphone mini since it's the only phone that fits their hands.
I'm a fairly large person (185 cm and decent sized hands), but I prefer the mini, and in my Android days used the Xperia mini. I don't particularly want a large phone on a day-to-day basis.
Unfortunately it seems that it's a niche that doesn't generate enough revenue to get broader support.
I got the feeling, that niche markets could be lucrative if the middle man (retail) is left out. The internet is a very powerful tool in this regard. It brings together customers from all over the world.
I actually think the loss of retailers is part of the problem: without places to go and touch and play with things, we've become increasingly beholden to reviewers and shrill opinion factories to try and evaluate things. Niches, especially niches that rely on non-spec driven evaluation, wither and die.
5% of people who buy an iPhone think that the mini is a good choice, but literally every review or discussion of it is positively hysterical about battery life. If you haven't picked one up and handled it, you'd think that it offered no merit and was going to shut down 2 hours into the day.
A recent discussion on this at my work was centred around the notion that large phones don't generally fit in women's clothes pockets (when they have pockets), as the pockets tend to be smaller. There seems to be an inherent sexism in phone design (and clothing design, and many other things).
I've been mostly wearing men's pants for the past few years to get past the pocket problem (skinny leg men's pants fit me pretty well and still have OK pockets). I'm probably in the minority though, most women just carry a pocketbook.
That is very culture dependent, I think. I don’t know a single woman who usually carries a purse! (I live in Norway. And maybe my acquaintances are unusual. But still.)
I'm a tall man with large hands and my S10 is uncomfortable. Just ordered an iPhone 13 mini after finding out that the Pixel 6a, my last hope for a small Android phone, will be big. This will be my first iOS phone despite 10+ years on Android. The situation is idiotic.
I used a friend's once and it seemed fine! Taller height is generally more manageable. It's the lack of one-handed keyboard usability that irritates me the most with modern android phones, and that's more of a width thing.
Thank you for working on this! I want to be honest, though, and say I think you're missing what the majority of users on this forum want in a small phone.
> Sub 6" display, matching size and design of iPhone 13 Mini
No, bad. What most of us want are the particular set of trade-offs made by phones around 2015. Design wise, that means that you've got to have another hole in the bezel, because there's going to be an earphone jack. That's apparently anathema for modern phones, but probably 90+% of us want it. Again, that's Hacker News specific. I haven't polled the market in general. I just know that I (and many others) won't consider buying your phone unless it has a jack.
Likewise, I have not much interest in a phone with a hole punched in the screen (?!) for a camera or an ugly "notch". I realize this is more controversial, but I don't know the last time I even used a front camera. I think it's more in keeping with the ideal 2015 design to make the bezel just large enough to contain a camera, speakers, light sensor, flash/LED, etc. I would reluctantly buy a phone with a camera hole if it was otherwise acceptable and there was no ideal option on the market.
I'd prefer if the back were completely flat as well, with no camera bump. That's totally just my aesthetic preference though, I don't know how others feel. I think it should be possible to achieve this if we're going back to not worshiping thinness, and making the small phone thicker for the sake of battery life.
I'd also prefer a 16x9 display to whatever Apple is doing now. So much web video is still 16x9.
> Design wise, that means that you've got to have another hole in the bezel, because there's going to be an earphone jack. That's apparently anathema for modern phones, but probably 90+% of us want it. Again, that's Hacker News specific. I haven't polled the market in general. I just know that I (and many others) won't consider buying your phone unless it has a jack.
Your jump from "I want" to "90+% of us want" is an egregious failure in reasoning. You say that you haven't polled the greater market, but you also haven't even polled HN.
That's fair. On the other hand, if there's a single issue with modern phones that gets HN users raging more than their size, it's the lack of a headphone jack. I don't think I've seen a single issue that's been more complained about. The dominant narrative on HN seems to be that even if one doesn't use headphones personally, the removal of the jack served no purpose other than to pad the pockets of Apple. (Someone even managed to modify their iPhone to add an internal jack without breaking it, so it was definitely possible for Apple to do so without compromises.)
This is a bias in what you notice, not what people care about. Some people care strongly about headphone jacks, but until you have data indicating that some==most, you shouldn't let that feeling turn into a population-based argument.
That's entirely possible, but this whole thread is based on exactly the same perception! The claim, possibly false, is that a sizable portion of HN users want small phones. That could be just visibility bias as well!
My comment is asserting that if we're assuming that the narrative on HN around small phones is not just sampling bias, then it's also good to assume that the narrative around a headphone jack is not just sampling bias. That means we have to believe that a large percentage of users looking for a small phone are also looking for a headphone jack - basically, what I called a "2015" design.
> The claim, possibly false, is that a sizable portion of HN users want small phones. That could be just visibility bias as well!
All you need to do is look at iPhone sales metrics. The iPhone 12 mini and SE2 collectively were 10+% of iPhone sales in the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021. 10% of iPhone sales is 24 million phones per year.
> if we're assuming that the narrative on HN around small phones is not just sampling bias
_We_ aren't. You shouldn't be assuming anything about some supposed narrative on HN at all, and you definitely shouldn't trust your own perceptions of such a narrative when you've already shown that you mentally translate "I and also I saw some comments some times" into "90+% of everyone here".
Such a narrative not only doesn't really exist, even if it did exist it still wouldn't matter, because, again, we have sales numbers for small iPhones that prove that people buy tens of millions of them annually when available.
> you mentally translate "I and also I saw some comments some times" into "90+% of everyone here"
First of all I said 90% of people here who are interested in a small Android phone, not 90% of everyone here.
Second, I feel you're trying to make me feel like I've gone insane and can't trust my own eyes by pretending that threads about the lack of a headphone jack don't routinely make the front page here [1] [2] [3] and that comments about the lack of a headphone jack don't routinely become the highest voted comments in any thread related to phones.
I don't think your point about iPhone sales holds any water, because you could just as easily show that people buy phones that have headphone jacks. The 12 mini is a smaller phone than the 12, so you could argue that some people who don't care about the size of their phone might be preferentially buying the mini! There's no way to make an airtight argument for either a headphone jack or a small phone as someone arguing on a forum, but I believe there are a lot of people who want both.
Moreover, my argument is that the removal of the jack was not done for any engineering reason, but for profit and aesthetics. Even if you are right that 50% of people would use a headphone jack instead of 90%, that's still a perfectly legitimate reason to include one.
No bad. I don't want those iritating headphone wires. Also a phone that doesn't mind being dropped in water, so no headphone jack please. Notch is not really an issue, front facing camera is useful for video-calls. And i don't have a camera bump, that's solved by the case. Also, no idea what i'd do with memory cards, there's plenty memory in the my phone.
The iphone 13 mini works well for me. No idea if this represents anybody elso on HN...
> Also a phone that doesn't mind being dropped in water, so no headphone jack please.
People have somehow managed to forget this, but phones have been waterproof since ... basically forever without forgoing a headphone jack. I could link probably half the phones made between 2012-2017, but this phone is actually linked by the site itself: https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/16/9549247/sony-xperia-z5-r...
Honestly, I'm not sure what the issue is supposed to be here. I've literally never, in 12 years of owning a smartphone, dropped it in water. I have no clue how that's even supposed to happen short of it falling into a river.
Since this is a small phone, I suspect most people will probably not be using a case that adds significantly to the size. Just a guess on my part though. I can live with a camera bump if I have to, I just think a lot of us miss the candy bar designs of ~2014-2015.
The most common way that a phone gets into water is that a woman has the phone in her pocket and it falls into the toilet. Most women's clothing has extremely terrible pockets that cannot securely hold a modern-size smartphone.
I am typing this from a waterproof phone with a USB C port and headphone jack. Yes, I have put it underwater. There were plenty of waterproof phones with headphone jacks before flagships dropped the port.
Similar user, and I have no idea if there will be anything left to buy after the Pixel 4a. I expect the 4a will be good enough for another 3 years at-least, if there are no accidents.
Hopefully by then there is something available which continues the form factor. 4a has been the perfect successor to the Nexus 4, it's a little taller but other than that has practically the same footprint.
With the 6a moving in a different direction (eg: removing the headphone jack) I'm just hoping someone else comes along as a spiritual successor for the Pixel Xa-series.
Another Pixel 4a user here. I haven't found a single compelling reason to move to another phone, and will drive this one into the ground... Hopefully there's a suitable replacement once it's dead, otherwise I'll just buy another 4a
Yeah, I've been using the 4a for about a year now, it is pretty sweet. It's the phone I wanted after the Nexus 5. (but with wireless charging). The size is great and it's light. I hate heavy phones.
I was about to buy exactly this after reading reviews, wanting a compact phone, and my Note8 dying.
But for a few different reasons I ended up just getting my wife an S22 (non plus) and then inherited her S20 (non plus), which has a very similar form factor.
Definitely felt the OPs frustration in looking for compact Android phones. They just plain don't exist.
I've been very happy with mine. As another user mentioned, the main issue with it is the battery life isn't as good as some other Android phones, but it's good enough that as long as I charge it daily I rarely have to worry about it. Though I do really wish it had wireless charging.
I like the form factor of mine. Only thing I don't like with it is the battery time, which is shorter than I'd have preferred. But I bought it almost a year ago now, there might be a new model coming that fixes that.
I am also planning to move from a 4a, and at this point it would be either a Sharp R7 (probably not available internationally though) or a Sony Xperia 10 IV.
The Sony seems to be the best alternative though I have no idea of the software quality.
Zenfone 8 - 148 x 68.5 x 8.9 mm (could be higher thanks to narrower body)
Xiaomi 12X - 152.7 x 69.9 x 8.2 mm
Samsung S21 - 151.7 x 71.2 x 7.9 mm
Sony doesn't produce phones, but remote controls. Their software is nice clean, but their camera is pretty bad, might as well buy Zenfone 8 if you don't mind camera.
>Sony doesn't produce phones, but remote controls. Their software is nice clean, but their camera is pretty bad, might as well buy Zenfone 8 if you don't mind camera.
I imagine few who have used one would ever be able to say this with a straight face. I never met an iPhone user who believed me when I told them all the photos I was showing them were taken with an Xperia XZc (1 and 2, respectively) and that's with every single one of them. There may be half a dozen compact smartphones that really compare to the XZ2c. Sony just gave up on them because the herd loves their phablets so much.
I am also a current owner of the Zenphone 8 and its camera is also decent. If it's really important that you be able to snap the best photos possible, though, they've been developing these discrete camera things for over a century (and the best of them will likely continue to outperform any general purpose device for the foreseeable future).
I've been burnt by Sony. Back in the first generation of the compact flagship. A great phone in all aspects... Until it was dropped. A tiny crack in the corner of the screen, you wouldn't notice without looking for it. Unfortunately engineering choices by Sony folk meant that any crack anywhere disabled the digitizer (i.e. the touchscreen loses the touch part). Such a bummer.
I have an Xperia 10 II (or something like that, the slimmest Android device I could find back in early 2021). The back cover is cracked all over, to the point I sometimes get cuts on my fingers. Two of the corners have dents.
The back camera that takes the actual photo is several degrees off (like 10 or 15°) from whatever is used for the preview. Works perfectly in all the other ways. Probably isn't waterproof any more, but I never needed that before, either.
Band support seems to be better, though I’m not sure which band would work in the US. Also they haven’t announced the non carrier bundled model yet, so I’m stil waiting as well to see how it pans out.
Snag up a lightly used Pixel 5 while you can. You get 5G and it is basically the same form factor, just a bit better all around. (I've had both and the Pixel5 is a step up for sure)
5G is completely useless in The Netherlands for the time being (until at least end 2023). You can safely ignore it if you're from NL. In other countries, how useful it is going to be depends on your use-case. For example, German autobahn has good 5G coverage.
I faced a similar problem when I didn’t find a sanely sized flagship non-bloated (though that’s essentially an oxymoron in Android world including the Pixels) Android phone sometimes back and I decided to vote with my wallet and I bought the first iPhone SE, then 7, and now 12 Mini. I am an Android developer and the way the OS is designed (UX and privacy wise; even the stock one) I don’t really see myself moving back to Android anytime soon but I wish there was a a flagship normal sized phone.
I dislike Apple for a lot of things but in this duopoly the size of a phone is such a fundamental characteristic that you’re out of options anyway.
I think most of the people are “swiper users” — the “content consumers” — so they want big phones and OEMs are simply making what the near 100% majority (yup!) wants.
Growing up I was told the major advantage of capitalism is that you get a diversity of offerings. This seems less and less true as time goes on, but maybe it was always an illusion.
It is only true when entry barriers to the market are low. Capitalism will give you a diversity of toasters or beer. Complex tech devices like phones have higher barriers, you can't just hack up a phone in a team of 5 people. Besides, economy of scale makes niche products more expensive.
The pixel 4a will be good for another 3 years? What kind of apps are you using? I'm still using a Samsung S7 and don't plan to replace it until it explodes or turns into dust. Then again I don't play games, but I do use it extensively to write/browse/chat. It's somewhat sluggish, but who cares? This idea that we need perfect loading times and constant high-tech phones is such a spoiled mindset.
> It's somewhat sluggish, but who cares? This idea that we need perfect loading times and constant high-tech phones is such a spoiled mindset.
It is, however, probably not a great idea to use a device that hasn't had a security update for several years.
Even if you were using a custom ROM and trusted that it was correctly patched (which is a big if) then there's hardware exploits on the Snapdragon 820, and I imagine there are probably similar on the Exynos 8890. Some of these can't be mitigated by software.
I have an iphone SE 2016 because I too felt that new Androids were too big, switched in 2019. If too many people are upset at the price maybe you could have an Android Mini-a like the Pixel line.
I had the first Pebble and have fond memories. I have high hopes for this!!!! I also love hardware but I never made it stick for work. I was one of the first engineers at Mesur.io, but things didn't work out.
My other thought would be to make this highly configurable; there is a large cohort of HN crowd who also want an un-Googled Android phone, myself included. There are no un-Googled small android phones, however with Project Treble many of them can run GSIs such as this most popular one https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/releases . Of course Lineage OS deserves a mention, maybe you could ship with that, build on what the community already offers.
The Unihertz line of phones deserves mention, but also scorn; they do NOT support their old hardware at all. The Jelly had 1 update to Android 8.1 and was left for dead. Additionally the system updater software included in the stock ROM was spyware. So unfortunately they were written off in my book.
Finally, I would like to see band 71 LTE availability for T-Mobile in the US. It really makes a big difference in the sticks. Unihertz does not support that, and for that reason I am sticking with my iPhone SE 2016 for the moment (until I find a small Android phone....)
With regards to Unihertz, I'll add on top of what you said, that they are hiding behind ""crowdfunding"" to give non-existent customer support, while devices have already passed Google certifications months ahead (so my guess is that the device is actually already produced when they start the crowdfunding). In my case, the smartphone I ordered never arrived, and I never got any compensation for it, even though
However, hardware-wise, they aren't too bad, so once you managed to receive it, and you flashed a GSI on it, it's a rather acceptable experience. I know someone daily-driving a GSI (I think it's ProtonAOSP?) on Unihertz Jelly 2, and they are happy with it.
In my opinion, Unihertz small phones are fun, but /too/ small. As the article says, target would be 5-5.5" borderless, 4.5" in Jelly2's format, and I couldn't find any model that match. Closest is Xiaomi Qin 2 Pro (I have it, the form factor is really awesome), but it is too thin and thus its battery is abysmal. (If anyone is interested in Xiaomi Qin 2 Pro, yes it can run GSI just fine, but it requires a bit of work - feel free to send me an email for help)
I also got an s10e because iirc it was the only smallish Android phone with ok specs and ok IP rating (also I avoided Chinese brands—though Samsung isn't necessarily everyone's choice either). Very comfortable format!
I've gotten the s10e just last month because it's the top phone that can still run linux on dex (which is a disappointment, but that's a topic for another day), and doesn't have those stupid Samsung edge displays (s10+ 12GB RAM edition).
I'm not sure those other phones are any better in terms of running linux (termux) and those non-samsung ones don't even have dex so I don't even know what the high specs are for.
S22 should be good once it's no longer the latest phone and you can grab at a discount, and maybe Android 13 with KVM is out by then.
I'd love a small primary phone with good battery life for general use (SMS/IM, and (shock!) making/taking calls). Relatively low resolution screen would not be a problem at all.
But I, like most people I expect, also use my phone for many other uses some of which make good use of a larger screen at higher resolution: in-car GPS and while running/walking out on the trails, web browsing and social media stuff that would not be pleasant on smaller screens, occasionally video. The better screen necessitates a bigger battery too, increasing the weight and size a bit more.
I'm not sure there is a solution for that, other than perhaps carrying two devices around. Most people would not be happy with that solution and tethering the bigger device to the smaller ones (so they share internet connectivity instead of both needing SIMs & paid accounts) will reduce the battery life of the small device noticeably (running the 4G/5G and WiFi radios constantly being quite a drain I find, when tethering a laptop to my main current phone).
For a lot of people who would want the smaller phone, there is a secondary need for which they want the larger one too, and putting up with a big device for everything is likely to be the preferable “compromise” compared to carrying two devices.
I've considered the two device approach, but the only really small phones (significantly smaller than my current main device) I found were cheap Chinese imports and one of the first corners cut on those is using a cheap battery that won't last long on active use. Battery life is why my current phone is large than the previous one (which was already larger than I'd prefer often) as it can last a goodly while in active use (GPS and screen on).
tl;cbatr: I suppose the point of this directionless rambling, is that I think the market for a smaller device, people who would actually buy one rather than just those who think it is something that should exist, is smaller than you hope.
This is where I am. Love the idea of a small phone like the android Palm Phone, and almost bought one. But my iPhone 13 Pro Max is basically so big I use it in place of my laptop for many, many things. So it basically replaces my dslr because of the camera quality and my laptop unless I’m writing software. Though I would love a small phone, I didn’t buy the Palm which would have been perfect for when I’m running or something, so I’m not sure I would buy this, even though I want it to exist.
Palm phone fwiw also got discontinued for lack of interest as far as I know.
Palm phone was expensive with garbage specs. But I suppose I was never in the market for it; I wanted a phone that was good enough to be my only phone.
The specs are indeed garbage, but I've been using it as my daily driver for over a year and I really don't want to change to anything else since the form factor and weight are just so nice for when I'm out of the house. For reading the news at home or similar stuff, I do use an old Pixel 3a though.
> in-car GPS and while running/walking out on the trails, web browsing and social media stuff that would not be pleasant on smaller screens, occasionally video
I think the last time I considered screen size a limiting factor for these activities was when the flagship phones had 4.5" screens or so. We've gone well beyond what's needed for me to find the screen large enough for regular activities, and well into the realm where I find using my phone with one hand to be uncomfortable.
Size isn't the reason I went with the larger phone last time I upgraded - it was the longer active (rather than standby) battery life. I can be a fair distance from any source of power for a goodly time and not worry about it shutting down for that reason. Even smaller devices (of those easily available at the time) showed less endurance in independent tests, due to having the smaller battery in their smaller form and/or less advanced chipsets, the exception being one with a lower resolution screen but that was a compromise point too.
I would think if you were running that you would prefer a smaller screen, having to stick a gigantic slab in my pocket whenever I transition from my walk to my jog constantly reminds me that I've got a brick flopping around in my shorts.
I never had a problem using a GPS on a small iPhone hooked up to a magnet on my dash in my car before, I can't imagine an extra inch and a half of real estate making that much of a difference.
> I would think if you were running that you would prefer a smaller screen
On of the reasons I'd like a smaller device, though there is the already stated compromises around smaller battery too, and it being a general use device. If I had a small device with excellent battery life I could carry that normally and tether a larger device, in my backpack when not in such use, for mapping and other when needed (I'm not talking nipping out for 10K here, sometimes this is full- or multi-day walking-or-faster events).
> having to stick a gigantic slab in my pocket … reminds me that I've got a brick flopping around in my shorts.
While the perfect phone doesn't exist, I have found the holy grail of shorts: big enough pockets that the slab fits, but tight enough and small enough that it doesn't jiggle noticeably, but not tight to me such that is exacerbates sweat in that patch. Also, the phone for nav on long routes is tertiary, I have breadcrumb trail on my wrist and a printed map (on rip- & water-resistant paper), so if I'm going far enough to require a bag for water/foot/1st-aid/other then there is room for the slab in there too and it isn't too out of reach.
> I'm not sure there is a solution for that, other than perhaps carrying two devices around. Most people would not be happy with that solution and tethering the bigger device to the smaller ones (so they share internet connectivity instead of both needing SIMs & paid accounts)
People do that all of the time and gladly pay the extra $10 for a smaller “phone” - the cellular Apple Watch.
I will leave my phone in a heartbeat when I’m going to the gym, the pool, or anywhere else where a large phone isn’t convenient and I still want to be able to keep in touch with people
Curious how would you solve the battery issue, since in your spec you mention 4Hrs of Screen On Time (SoT), and it would be a 5G phone (battery drainer)?
iPhone Mini with its H/W & S/W integration barely manages 4Hrs of SoT. An 'Android Mini' phone with its mini batteries, how can it match upto iPhone Mini? And mind you, low sale of iPhone Mini is also due to the 'battery/range anxiety' that its users have.
Upon that any Mini form factor needs to be even less thinner, as visual perception of thickness is inversely proportional to a form's face/back surface area. So for this mini phone to be reasonably attractive (not chunky) it needs to have a very slim profile; which translate to small battery.
I get that tastes vary and some people apparently don't mind the hole punch in the display, but I'm curious why you list its presence as a hard requirement. It seems like it would make the display unnecessarily harder to source.
I want headphone jack and SD card compatibility back, so I can store my audio library somewhere else (more reliable and less costly) other than the cloud, but phone makers are bent on disappointing customers and customers keep buying whatever junk they make and label as overpriced flagship devices.
I bought a Palm Phone as soon as it came out, it is the perfect phone. Basically same size as the old Motorola Razr but even a bit thinner.
I'm very sad they discountinued it. I hope mine lasts forever or that either Palm or someone else fills this market gap for a small phone. If this initiative does it, thank you!
My highest requirement for a phone is that it easily fits into the front pocket of tight jeans so I can't ever even feel that it is there. The Palm Phone meets this requirement, haven't found anything else that does.
One of the reasons I want a small phone is because I already have other devices with a larger screen: computer, laptop and tablet.
That's why I want it to be cheap, I have already spent a lot on different devices and for the little use I give it I want it to be cheap and small.
Of course. But phone manufacturers don't want this. They don't want you using those other devices. And they have the power, so you will submit to their decisions.
I think than some two of the prerequisites are the real problem :
* Great cameras
* Stock Android OS
There are plenty of recent small smartphones with a display under 6". But most of them use Android Go and a not-great camera. I have recently tested one, the Logicom Le Wave, a 60€ phone with a 4" display sold in Europe.
During my test, i have find Android Go 11 very reliable. It's even more easy to avoid using Google applications and to not link the phone to a Google account (by using F-Droid & Aurora Store) than Stock Android. There are also nice features for managing battery usage. That said the two cameras are indeed crap (but i do not take photos with a phone, for this i use a real cameras). My main problem with this phone is that it's also bad for... phoning: I mean than the sound quality is crap too.
I was probably unlucky with my choice, but there are plenty of alternatives for 4" to 6" smartphones. Search for "teenage" or "unbreakable" phones.
If the real objective is to have a light phone, who fit nicely in the pocket, than can be used one-handed and who won't fall out of the pocket while bicycling, then this sort of phones are perfectly fine. So my question is why the need of a good camera and stock Android ?
(For the main point, i agree with you, smartphones are becoming ridiculously too big)
I've never owned a better phone than the Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G because it's substantially thinner and lighter than any other phone of that size. A smaller screen size may be nice but I've realised how much more I really care about the phone being thin and light. I don't even notice it in my back pocket. I'm now allergic to picking up the new heavy iPhones.
If the smaller screen wouldn't make the phone even thinner I probably wouldn't care enough to switch.
If you can make a phone I love as much as my Pebbles, I'll buy nothing else, forever. I guess confirming there's a market for it is the first step.
My phone requirements haven't changed much in the last ten years. I bought one of the first "phablet" phones with a comically oversized 5" screen that got me ribbed by friends ("compensating for something eh mate?") Now 5" is at the bottom of the available size range. I'm a smallish person/manlet and don't need a phone I'm going to drop, but I do need something big enough that I can reliably type on it.
I'll gladly support your endeavor. Thanks for taking the initiative.
edit: fine with me to make the phone thicc so it has a day+ battery life. A little thicker is far easier to hold on to, anyway!
edit2: I did own a Pixel 6 non-XL for about a day. It was large, but the bigger problem was that I found it incredibly topheavy, which made it difficult to hold on to. I swapped for a used 4a 5G, which is a well-balanced midsized device.
The Pixel 5 was just right IMO. I upgraded to a Pixel 6 after the fingerprint sensor had problems. The first thing I noticed was it was too big. I liked the size of the five much better.
Why only aim for 4 hours of screen on time? I understand the battery will be smaller too but so is the screen. I'd hope to see a bit more. Also, remember that most people won't care about thickness so much especially if it's rugged enough to not need a case.
But anyway good luck with the project! I backed the first Pebble and I'll probably use Beeper once it's fully available. You have a history of delivering on your promises. I just want to wait a bit to see how this one turns out in detail.
I have a Pixel 4a, and I'm in agreement with you. I'm thinking about jumping to an iPhone Mini, however, even Apple doesn't seem to be making a new version of that....
Yeah, I'm 100% switching to Apple on my next upgrade, probably the mini, but it's screen may be a tad too small. Either way, I've been with Android since the start, but I'm over it.
They depreciate so fast.
i dunno what makes you think that. the iphone 13 mini was released alongside the other iphone 13's and is the latest gen. all signs point to apple releasing a mini version of the next iphone, too.
My Pixel 3 is just a bit bigger then the iPhone 13 Mini... works great with Lineage OS... might have to change the battery in a year though (not looking forward to it).
I just replaced the battery on my pixel 3. I also replaced the USB C port, because it was cheap and the phone was open. It's pretty simple to do, just tedious. I would recommend buying a replacement back as well so you don't have to worry about keeping the glass intact.
I would love a smaller phone then the pixel 3 but I'll stick with this for now, it's my absolute max size.
No not waterproof, but I didn't try very hard. I would sort of prefer the phone to be easier to open. I used t-7000 glue which seemed really good, the main spot I feel like is not waterproof is where the finger print reader attaches to the back panel, and the camera lense cover.
Looks like it's less then 5 bucks. I bought everything from injuredgadgets. I'm sure there are other good places as well. Can't really review the battery, it's only been a couple days, but so far it's good.
I’m in the same boat, though I like apple. I’d still go for an android phone if they made something really small though.
However, I think the era of small phones as we know it is over for now. The smallest we have is the Mini, and even that isn’t small.
In fact, I think the next version of the small phone will be flip phones. We already see this with the Samsung fold. I tried one and was pretty impressed, and I feel like this is the likely direction the industry may take.
However, I’m using my current phone for the next five or six years. I’m sure by then, the folding screen tech will improve a lot, and apple may even have their own version out by then.
Samsung S7 user here. Perfect phone. Good looking (silver one is awesome), no notches, great camera, good battery.... and perfect size. It's hard to accept for companies that they already achieved a great result, and only minor improvements need to be added. Maybe because if they would keep selling S7a, S7b, etc people wouldnt be so convinced to buy new ones so they need to make changes and somehow convince people the many changes are for the better... even if they aren't.
Zenfone 8 - 148 x 68.5 x 8.9 mm (could be higher thanks to narrower body)
Xiaomi 12X - 152.7 x 69.9 x 8.2 mm
Samsung S21 - 151.7 x 71.2 x 7.9 mm
S22 has almost identical dimensions as Pixel 5, so there is your upgrade. Personally I find all of these overpriced for what I need, I would be perfectly fine with 4A specs with better battery, so can't justify to upgrading to some of these.
I just had to throw away my Pebble Time ~1 month ago. It was the best watch I could have asked for but I got some ocean water in it and it wouldn't dry out this time :( I am also using an Moto G7 Play android phone from like 2018 because it's the only small phone I could find for a reasonable price. I would love to see you make something like this!
I would buy your phone, but I don't really like the iPhone mini industrial design. The square edges make it a bit hard to hold. I also don't mind if it's a bit larger than iPhone mini. Pixel 3/iPhone 13 size is my limit.
If nobody makes something like this, I'll likely switch to iPhone 14 when it's released.
At the moment it looks as if there will be no iPhone 14 Mini. You don't explicitely mention "Mini" here, but from context it looks as if you mean that. Just a heads up (and the reason why I bought a 13 Mini even though my old phone was still fine).
By the way, I was interested in Beeper but it seems the airtables link to sign up blocks any ip addresses from Hong Kong. I just get a blank page when I try to sign up.
Just bringing it up, I have noticed quite a few sites have blanket bans on HK ips but it's rather frustrating.
I'm curious why you say "After the Pixel 5". Isn't that still pretty current specs wise? I love mine. I too would like to know where I'm moving next, but I'm also quite content with its specs for likely awhile yet.
I want to add another comment here supporting the fact that the camera is probably the main device feature I care about, and why I end up with a phone fancier and bigger than I’d like, and maybe second most important factor is battery life.
please reverse the order you list the phones in your last image... no reason other than it irks me that the lowest phone in the image is listed highest and vice versa
Hear hear! I hope your gadget guy dreams come to fruition again and you sell 10 million! I only am chiming in to say a premium phone should be water resistant!
Hi Eric, I'm a hardware startup guy myself (our paths have crossed) with the distinction that my own "very specific set of skills" has been honed at smartphone megacompanies and smartphone startups. OSOM, Essential, HTC, Samsung, Apple. I've designed and built a lot of phones. I'm building one now. I think this is a noble effort, I personally prefer pocketable phones too, but I think there are nigh-insurmountable hurdles in your paths forward.
- 1. Supply chain / component R&D -
You will be very, very hard pressed to source a pre-existing, high quality, non-exclusive 5.4" display with a hole punch. If you end up doing this as your own startup then you're going to start by trying to buy off the shelf parts to keep costs down. But that display you want is simply not on any of the development roadmaps for the major component manufacturers. The industry has its own momentum, and the component suppliers have also been looking at the trendlines so they are building bigger and bigger.
If you can't find the screen you want in a catalogue then you have to pay someone to build it. Convincing BOE et. al that your phone will sell enough to pay off R&D costs is unlikely, so be prepared to pay several million bucks in NRE to make it worth their time (it might still not be) and the wait a year for them to spin up the fabs. So ~$5M and 9-18 months later you have a display.
- 2. Big players are uninterested, not uninformed -
Big companies are drowning in market data. They know some people really, really want small phones. But it's a long-tail opportunity they're willfully ignoring, and people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly. I've been in the meetings, small phone advocacy goes nowhere.
Also I'm a little surprised you're hoping an online petition will work after your prior experience trying to influence your acquirers. I presume you saw the inside of Fitbit / Google and how decisions are made...
> Big companies are drowning in market data. They know some people really, really want small phones. But it's a long-tail opportunity they're willfully ignoring
I would argue that they don’t know what people want at all, since market data just reinforces previously held assumptions. For example if you surveyed people in 2006 what kind of phone they wanted, most consumers would probably ask for a better flip phone. It wasn’t until Apple came along and defined a new market that Smartphones even became a thing in the mainstream consciousness.
Smaller screened smartphones aren't a new market that needs to be defined though. Most people know what they are by virtue of having lived through the era that they were the only choice.
And as OP pointed out, Apple makes a smaller screened smartphone, so they exist. In some comment on this post someone said that it accounts for 3% of Apple's phone sales.
How big is the group of people that want a smaller smart phone but aren't willing or able to switch to Apple? Who knows. My intuition says not many, but maybe we'll find out through OP's efforts. I'm an iPhone user and the only reason I haven't switched to something like the iPhone Mini is because I want the better camera on the pro's.
I suspect there are two constraints working against mini mobiles:
1. The industry push for thin due to the consumer dislike of thick.
2. The invisible consumer expectation that smaller mobiles should be cheaper.
A mini screen with a fat body (large battery, good camera) is what many functionally oriented people should want, but cost and form will limit consumer desire and make it an extremely niche product?!?
Edit: I am thinking more Canon IXUS cross bred with a 20000mAh powerbank and stock Android One. In fact Canon or another reliable camera brand would be the perfect manufacturer. Fat and robust could work: sell the functionally ugly to practical tradesmen type? Unfortunately writer desires thin and light, which I don’t care about. No need for front-facing camera, instead put a 1” (4:3?) screen on the side of the main camera to allow for pointing/framing when doing selfies.
Functionally oriented people often have other constraints. I have tight constraints for mobiles: I am price sensitive (I break or lose phones), I want vanilla Android (manufacturer skinned often has broken upgrades & broken privacy & broken features), and I generally won’t buy products from extremely niche brands (unpredictable reliability, & trust issues).
¡Awesome! Even if shit execution, fugly, one-trick gimmick, with terrible branding.
* “Other manufacturers have managed to make a success of selling high-capacity smartphones. BlackView (and, for that matter, Ulephone, Doogee, and AGM) does especially well. Although they come with ginormous cells, they’re primarily designed to be hardy, and can take more of a beating than Mickey Rourke in the boxing ring.”
* “French smartphone manufacturer Avenir Telecom attempted to crowdfund the P18K on Indiegogo, but ultimately failed in a way that was previously unthinkable for a project that’s attracted so much press coverage and public interest. In total, Avenir Telecom ‘sold’ sixteen (absolute) units.”
* “there are people who would benefit from a phone with a 18,000 mAh battery. I’m talking about military users, people working in the oil and gas industry, famers, and even truckers. Avenir did nothing to cater to this valuable niche.”
* “The P18K, on the other hand, lacked waterproofing and shockproofing, making it thoroughly unsuitable for outdoor users.”
* “Avenir Telecom wanted €600 for a phone with the internals of a €200 phone. Without anything extra – like ruggedization – that’s a hard sell. It just didn’t represent good value for customers.”
* “Measuring several inches thick”
I was exaggerating a little by saying 20000mAh: about 5000 to 10000 would probably be sweet.
Also camera lenses on the P18K were not flush with reverse side - ugggh. There should be a proper shutter button (positioning and half-press to hold focus). Lenses needs protection eg. manual sliding shutter which when opened puts phone into camera mode (I have cracked mobile phone camera lenses).
Plenty of people want a proper waterproof camera (low light, macro, Tele, optical image stabilisation) in their pocket, and why not combine that with hardy mobile phone?
I can imagine making the screen plus battery plus the USB port all as a single user-replaceable part? Those are the usual culprits that get broken or need replacing.
I love the big battery stuff but I don't see how it's profitable because powerbanks, powerbanks cases, and even magnetic or clipon wireless charging powerbanks exist and can cheaply be tailored to fit tons of phones. What benefit would a massive battery confer over a massive battery bank case. One that would be swappable / replaceable. I only recently gave up my S5 with a 10,000mAh extended battery. But with powerbanks and wireless charging it doesn't seem like a real market anymore.
> powerbanks, powerbanks cases, and even magnetic or clipon wireless charging powerbanks exist and can cheaply be tailored to fit tons of phones
This is true. This is also irrelevant if nobody actually does it. My nexus 7 tablet survived 6 years with a dead battery due to having qi charging. For every phone I've bought since then, I have searched for charging cases and not found even a single one at the time. This includes the moto e2, moto G5, moto G6, and my current Samsung phone (a32 or something, can't recall at the moment; it's the free T-Mobile 5g phone). Basically I wanted something that ideally supported wireless charging, but at minimum was semi-permanently attached to the charging port (charger built into the case itself to protect my port).
I think 20000mAh is achievable now. I have a 20k battery pack on my desk and it’s pocketable, if heavy. Much thinner than the Energizer phone. I’m picturing your phone design as an original Galaxy Fold, but solid instead of the hinge/internal screen. The chassis could fit more than a 10k battery easily, and the shape is simple to ruggedize.
> Avenir Telecom wanted €600 for a phone with the internals of a €200 phone.
This is the big issue. Avenue’s not to blame here. It’s unavoidable, the design is just too non-standard.
If you could get a military contract then it might work.
The battery doesn't have to be small if you're okay with moderate thickness. And a lot of power goes to the screen so that cancels out. To the extent that this is true, you're just restating "push for thin" and it's not a separate problem.
Lower performance than what? I'm not convinced that's a real issue unless you're trying to make a flagship.
Why couldn't you fit a top-tier camera? That's like a square centimeter.
I was thinking much larger optics and mechanicals, similar to a PowerShot N (except with modern video specs): Optical image stabilization, 8x optical zoom, 1/2.3" Sensor (6.17mm x 4.55 mm), Maximum aperture F3–5.9, Macro focus range 1cm. A real camera: even though I realise in the past there have been plenty of failed camera-phones in the marketplace!
Apple's limited success is not only a factor of the screen size but also market positioning. The mini is inferior in some specs to other iPhones but at the same time really high end as far as mobiles in general go. That makes it a niche product even if screen size was not a factor at all.
It targets people that have plenty of cash for a flagship but are willing to forego the top tier specs for a smaller size. Apple prefers you just buy the pro. And if you don't have much cash you can get the reheated 2017 iphone 8 with SE slapped on it :)
I bet if they made a mini T the price of an SE with a more limited camera and screen spec than the current mini it would take 50% of SE sales away.
You can't judge the market viability of one aspect based on a single model.
I would consider both flagship models, considering the pricing. For me mid-range is < 500€ (and normally way below that) so the iPhone SE doesn't even qualify here in Europe (it's 529€).
My current mid-range phone is a Samsung A52s which costs 329€.
But perhaps my long Android history has skewed my pricing concepts somewhat.
13: 71.5 x 146.7 x 7.65
13 Mini: 64.2 x 131.5 x 7.65
3rd gen SE: 67.3 x 138.4 x 7.3
1st gen SE: 58.6 x 123.8 x 7.6
I strongly prefer the 1st gen SE because it's significantly easier for me to use with one hand, it's got a completely flat back (no camera bulge), and it's got a headphone jack and home button.
All the same reasons for me. Plus I like cheap. I just bought a 3rd gen SE but only because my 7 was on its last legs. The idea that an iPhone 7 isn’t good enough anymore is just absolutely silly to me. I was hoping the 3rd gen SE would be a throwback in size and cost $300, but I didn’t get my wish.
iPhone mini is almost exactly the same size in the hand (2.5" width) as the iPhone4/5 and smaller than 6/7/8/SE (2.7" width) , but the screen coverage/diag is significantly larger than the SE (85%/5.4" vs 60%/4.7").
I think he meant diag screen size? The 11/12/13 are 6.1" while maxs are 6.7"
The biggest issue for me is the battery. The first mini had horrible battery life, I know the 13 is better. The fact is I'm spoiled rotten with the Pro battery life and don't see the size winning me over.
Same—I just bought a new iPhone…I thought the mini was right for me, but after three days of using it, it was clear that the battery life was worse than my years-old Pro. So I returned it and got the Pro instead.
The other challenge was that I found it hard to go back to the smaller onscreen keyboard and display. I think I was deluded about my vision being as good as it was 10 years ago!
Try swipe typing, it really helps make small screens a lot more comfortable for me. I have one tiny Android phone with 2.5" display and it actually makes that one usable.
Even the small phone user base is probably fragmented between people who want a lower cost phone and people like me that want the Pro or better, just smaller.
Apple already has the SE for the low cost market. They have positioned the mini as the mid-range. What they're missing is a high-end small phone. I'd happily pay for it.
The current SE isn't a small phone; it's a previous-era-of-design phone. It's a phone from before phones gave you as much screen as would fit on the front face of the body. If you want that, you can just buy any new-old-stock phone from 5 years ago; they're all cheap, they're all that size, and they're all (IMHO) painful to read or watch anything on.
A low-cost small phone would be the opposite of the SE: not good-specs, bad-screen; but rather all-screen, bad-specs. An iPhone Mini minus-minus.
Agreed, I think this is not only for the reason of cheap manufacturing (I doubt it's a lot cheaper than just reusing the iPhone XR case). I think it's just a conscious disincentivisation (word?) from Apple to avoid cannibalising their mainline models :) I'm surprised it's so popular, because I really don't miss the bezel. All-screen phones are a great advancement.
If I had an iPhone I would seriously miss the fingerprint scanner but this is not an issue on Android, the in-screen option works amazingly well.
Indeed, I desperately want a smaller phone, but I heavily use the camera on my phone and in the end I decided I wasn't willing to give up camera quality for the iPhone Mini. So Apple's data may suggest that I don't want a small phone, but the reality is that I want a small phone that's actually as good as the big ones. No one has offered that.
My last couple of phone purchases have actually been camera purchases.
I got an iPhone XR for the low light performance of the camera, not because I needed a new phone.
I got a 13Pro for the cameras and lidar, not because I needed a new phone.
My reality is I want a great camera that fits in my pocket and is durable - that also makes calls, runs Signal, streams Spotify/AppleMusic, and has a usable web browser...
Same, I went from original SE to 11 pro max because of camera envy. Maybe once all of my kids are a bit older I won't care as much about the camera though.
> The mini is inferior in some specs to other iPhones but at the same time really high end as far as mobiles in general go. That makes it a niche product even if screen size was not a factor at all.
I feel like it being smaller is a factor in it having inferior specs: much easier to fit a better camera etc into a larger body.
> How big is the group of people that want a smaller smart phone but aren't willing or able to switch to Apple?
It just feels like surely capturing 100% of the market for premium small Android phones (there really are none right now) must be at least as good as yet another large Android phone entering a market full of large Android phones.
I do not care if they do not make a new mini every year. I just want a mini available for purchase, and the 13 mini should be very capable for at least a few more years.
That might actually be what Apple is doing, skipping mini for 14, but not stopping mini forever. Sony did the same, there where Compacts of Z1, Z3 and Z5.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
- Henry Ford.
However, in this day and time when it comes to established tech such as a smart phone, sometimes the best way to 'innovate' might be to give people what they actually want. Sure not all companies can cater all niches. But hopefully someone will! Im also a small phone advocate.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford.
Just a note that this quote, and a similar one by Steve Jobs (‘Market research could never have given us the Macintosh’) are amongst the most misinterpreted in history. Most people see them as saying ‘market research is useless’ - what both were actually saying is that you need to take a new innovation to the customer and _then_ ask them what they think of it.
So no, don’t just flat out ask people what they want - but intuit and give people a little taste of what they could have - and then ask them what they think.
Also horses that could run at 100mph for 5 hours at a time would be far better than early cars. They run on clean renewable fuel, have built in natural intelligence to avoid crashes and carry drunk drivers, and come in a variety of pleasing colors (not just black!).
The main benefit of cars was that if you delay maintenance your transportation doesn’t die.
Do you mean from cars or horses? If the former, early automobiles were far cleaner than the animals they replaced (and still are). Cities faced huge issues with animal excrement and cars represented a cleaner alternative.
Obviously you can't do such a simplistic direct comparison between horse emissions and car emissions. How does leaded petrol play into this comparison, particulates, etc.
You're totally right, my comment was far too simplistic. However it captures the feelings at the time, cars at that time were far "cleaner" in that they smelled a lot better, did not clog streets with excrement etc
Obviously play the car out a few decades and the emissions were _not_ so clean.
Have people not seen any sci fi with self replicating mechanicals? It never goes well. Humans wouldn't be around for very long to remember anything at all.
I too want a foldable with the latest generation tech but is that available today?
At the time I bought the z-flip 3 my understanding was that the tradeoff was unavoidable. My opinion at the time of purchase was that the incremental benefit of the latest version of CPU, camera and battery were pretty marginal relative to the large benefit from the unique form factor.
I'm not currently in the market but that could well have changed if new foldables have since been released.
That’s splitting hairs. Premium ≠ Best in all components. And the iPhone 12 and 13 have sold pretty well by all reports so the screen size is the only differentiator feature wise. (And battery which is unavoidable)
Last month I had to use an Essentials PH-1 phone for a day while i waited for a new phone.
It was the perfect size for me and the build quality was really nice. Unfortunately, the OS was outdate and the specs not as high. It has 4GB RAM, Snapdragon 825, 13MP camera @ 2160p and a 5.7" display.
It looked premium, it felt premium and was the perfect size. If someone could pack more punch with specs in that phone I would buy it for even $1k.
The reason it's not a big market is that if glove-sizing worked the same way as phones, you'd have people with small glove size walking around in ginormous gloves. That's not the case because glove sizing actually behaves rationally, as opposed to truck-sizing, where every human in America wants a ginormous truck regardless of their actual need. Sadly, phones follow trucks, not gloves, because the former is ego-driven, not need-driven. Apple deserves credit for recognizing the counter-example to its own market presence and engages fully around it while no competitor follows suit.
Agreed. When I bought the original Samsung Galaxy Note, my friends all thought it was hilariously, ridiculously, impractically large. It was smaller than my current Pixel 5.
Yes, this phone is hard to use one handed, but the value of the large screen outweighs everything else.
> most consumers would probably ask for a better flip phone
I'm not sure about that, sidekicks, plan and blackberry were pretty popular and gaining a lot of mainstream interest for modern 'smartphone' type things
> people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly
I'll be blunt: no I won't. I reluctantly bought the phone I still use (a moto X4) back in 2019, at which point it was already getting old. It was one of the smaller Android phones available at the time; I measured it diagonally corner to corner (including bezel) at 159 mm (6.26 inches). The screen size is 130 mm (5.2 in) according to Wikipedia. This phone is in fact much too big for me, and I'm not happy with it.
But I will be sticking with this phone into the indefinite future: until it breaks, becomes unusable, or a worthy replacement arises (a phone the size of the Nexus 5X or preferably smaller, with my must-have features). In the event I can't get this I will switch to a cheap feature phone since I need something for emergency use. I'll look into the mp3 player market to see if there's something I can use for playing music and audio books, maybe if I'm lucky there's something with a nice screen and an e-reader.
I'm sure you're right and some people are more willing to compromise than me. However, what also seems likely is that many people are somewhere in between and will wait until their current phone is unusable before reluctantly downgrading to whatever the latest model is. Surely plenty of sales are lost due to this.
Yeah, due to the ever-increasing difficulty of buying reasonably-sized phones, I've been keeping my phone longer and longer, well past the point of lag and annoyance where I'd prefer to buy a new one.... because there is no new one that I want. They're too big. They're worse for me than an out-of-support old phone that limps along and may require a third-party OS.
All told, I've probably bought less than half as many phones as I'd prefer. Yes, I do eventually buy one because they effectively are required nowadays, but that's quite a lot of money that isn't going into these company's hands.
Meanwhile, the rest of the market also seems to be lengthening their time between phone purchases..... and phone manufacturers respond by releasing bigger and more expensive phones year over year over year. I won't try to claim it's the majority of the cause, but surely there's some connection between those two.
I decided to die on a different hill-- physical keyboard. The blackberry keytwo wasn't perfect but it was definitely one of my favorite devices I've ever owned.
And now AT&T will no longer support phone calls on it. Planned obsolescence isn't so easy to run and hide from. They will dash your usable, friendly, pleasing devices from your hands and sneer at you for daring to want better.
> > people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly
> I'll be blunt: no I won't.
Agreed. I used my 2005 Motorola Razr until 2020 because I have zero interest in an inconveniently large phone. When the Palm Phone came out I got it as a perfectly-sized replacement.
I won't ever go to a larger phone because if it doesn't fit my pocket, what's the point? Might as well not have one.
There's that, but happily isn't the word. Every year I'd go on a research spree to find a replacement but it had to be as small or smaller. Every year I came up empty so eked out another year on the old phone.
I'd happily replace more often if only palm-sized or smaller phones were available. I'm not particularly price sensitive either, I'll pay top premium price to get a conveniently-sized phone if someone is willing to sell it to me.
> In the event I can't get this I will switch to a cheap feature phone since I need something for emergency use.
I tried switching to a feature phone and was surprised how often I use a smartphone; and how many people, banks, government organizations, restaurants, etc, assume that you have one.
Yes. COVID contact tracing in New Zealand nearly completely relied on QR-code sign-ins with an ios or android app, for example. My company has an app to manage my sick/annual leave in. Sure, there are fallbacks, but they're inconvenient and time or energy intensive in a way a phone isn't.
There are vanishingly small numbers of people who will insist on a perfect-or-nothing approach to smartphones. This market segment is unserviceable. Sure, the size will be right, but it won't have the right battery size, or the battery has to be swappable on-the-go, or it didn't have quite the right sd card option, or maybe the software isn't 'polished' enough, or it had to have two headphone jacks. There will be something 'not good enough' and therefore it's passed over even though they want a 'small' phone.
I'm sure there are people like that, but to be clear, I'm not one of them. There are many irritations I have with modern smartphones, but I'm willing to put up with all of them if necessary except 2: must be small enough, must have headphone jack. I'll buy any LineageOS capable phone that meets those criteria.
Right, but those are your specific requirements, the next person will insist on dual-sim. LineageOS capability is another piece that requires work, the headphone jack might be too hard for a small-scale small-phone manufacturing line as well, since someone else will require that it's waterproof.
There is a smartphone that meets the needs of a small-phone purchaser, after all, if small is the requirement - the iphone mini. But purchasing that would require some compromise on your hardline requirements, which will be different to someone else's hardline requirements such as a swappable battery.
Exactly. I've long dreamt of a "dumb" phone that has a text-only screen, can do text and calls, have a great camera, and also do WhatsApp (text only) because that's an important mode of communication for me. But those are *my* requirements, so I know it's not going to be built because hardly anyone will have my exact requirements.
Aha, you got me. I really should have specified that Nexus 5X was also too big.
Moreover, the specification that actually matters for one-handed phone users is the distance between the bottom corner of the phone (where it's held in the hand) and the top opposite corner of the screen, not the top corner of the phone. That's because that point is the furthest you'd ever need to stretch your thumb to use the phone. So actually, the displays getting bigger as the bezels get smaller has been part of the problem.
If you look at the Nexus 5X [1] you'll see that it has an enormous (by modern standards) top bezel. By comparison, a phone like the S22 has basically no bezel at all and will be much harder to use one-handed.
I actually used to be worried about the exact points you're making, as I used an iPhone 4 for years (which is tiny by today's standards).
However, in practice 'not being able to reach the whole screen with my thumb' hasn't turned out to be a big problem: navigation elements at the top of the screen tend to be less-used (as app devs also take into account that it's a hassle to reach them). If I really need to use them one-handed, I can always 'scoot' my hand up a bit. (I can see how this is harder if you have smaller hands, though.)
A larger screen also actually turns out to be quite nice, as more content fits on it (I'm actually writing this comment on my phone).
> However, in practice 'not being able to reach the whole screen with my thumb' hasn't turned out to be a big problem: navigation elements at the top of the screen tend to be less-used
If that's true, then app devs are thoroughly incompetent at it. Take a look at at Chrome on Android. The address bar, tab menu, and settings bar are all at the top of the screen. In 2021, Apple made the same change for Safari, moving the address bar from the bottom of the screen to the top [1]. The tab grid Chrome's push for tab grid [2] made it even worse, because depending on the tab, you may need to reach across the entire diagonal the reach the tab you want. Firefox has the option of putting the address bar at the bottom (and if so, the tabs show near the bottom as well), but the navigation buttons for bookmarks are near the top of the screen.
I don't think mobile developers think about one-handed phone use at all. Based on the designs used, with interactions bouncing all around the screen, it doesn't seem to be a concern at all. Perhaps they assume that everybody holds a phone with one hand and then touches the screen with the other hand.
I had the same situation with the S10e. I don't know how it compares to the Moto X4, but with the increased sized phones I have no interest in a new Android.
I only got this one because I couldn't find one smaller.
At the current rate I would have to move to iPhone just to stay a similar size.
I think this is at least partially a feedback loop issue. There aren't manufacturers even making small screens, and the time/cost of doing that isn't seen as worth investing in... because... look at what's selling - larger screens! - which are the only thing we're selling because... look at what's selling!
A small niche player that wants to try a different form factor/size isn't practically able to enter the market with anything but commodity screens.
I'm not sure why you're asking me, but the OP's site says that 5% of iPhone orders (10 million phones a year) are the mini. That's quite a large market in absolute terms.
> and the component suppliers have also been looking at the trendlines so they are building bigger and bigger
but... aren't they influencing the trendlines by doing this? if the only things manufacturers make are bigger and bigger, they then get to use the sale of those bigger items as justification to continue to make bigger items?
Also seems a bit weird with more eco-awareness going on that some manufacturers wouldn't explore/embrace 'smaller' in some sense. At scale, it would mean less materials, less shipping, less warehouse space, etc. Apple made a huge stink about getting rid of a wall plug in their packaging, and... over hundreds of millions of units, that little bit doesn't hurt.
Wouldn't more 5" screens (vs 6"+) require less power, less weight/shipping, and less input materials?
Yes, it is absolutely in a feedback loop. It's kind of bizarre to see up close.
The consumer hardware duopoly of Apple and Samsung are the only ones who seem to actually drive manufacturing trends. There are also tons of devices being made for the Chinese market, but you can't buy those because they're usually locked up in supplier agreements and honestly they don't meet "flagship" specs for display quality.
Component suppliers, true we-make-parts manufacturers, are not really trying to influence the big picture so much as make sure they are running their manufacturing lines at capacity. And if they are building panels on spec for open market sales, they are going to build >6" displays because it's a higher probability they'll actually sell at volume.
"Yes, it is absolutely in a feedback loop. It's kind of bizarre to see up close."
So supply chains behave like ecosystems.
In the natural world we see insects and animals develop things like bright plumage and big horns because the animal before them was successful in doing the same thing. This behavior can go on for a long time too. Then an asteroid hits (tantamount to bad economic times) and the fast moving generalists seem to succeed better than the highly adapted specialist.
Good point, with caveats: What is the comparison of 13-non pro vs. 13 mini? When I almost bought an iPhone recently, the thing that made me hesitate to consider for so long was that the mini is not pro - I want 90/120 hz, and they made a substandard flagship and blame poor sales on size. However, if the non-pro-fat 13 has great sales, you have a point.
Second, it's only iphone. I hesitated for so long to consider it at all because it requires switching environments.
Is it even physically possible to fit all the high-end features in a mini? The 12 mini was panned for poor battery life and they just about got that fixed in the 13, but now you want 120 Hz (which will eat away battery life), someone else in here demanded all the cameras (which will take away internal space from battery), not to mention the difficulty of heat dissipation
And here's the rub. I personally don't need the telephoto lens on the mini. But I tell you, after experiencing high refresh rate on a phone, it is terribly difficult to go back.
Apple touts their variable refresh rate for better use of battery than competitors - surely they could put it on the mini and still get it through a day of use.
3. Android OEMs can't make a good small phone, even if there was the demand to produce it at scale
Because of how efficient Apple's SoCs are compared to Snapdragons, Android phones typically have much larger batteries than iPhones while getting about the same battery life. Big battery requires a big phone. The occasional somewhat small Android phone (for example Galaxy S10e) tends to have awful battery life.
Pixel 5 has great battery life. Note that none of the requirements are that it is some game machine or anything. Even less than top-tier chipsets are just fine for me. I just want a good camera in a pocketable form factor.
I think OP means that Android Phones with comparable battery life to an iOS device tend to have a larger battery to support that (when compared to the iPhone), which is more difficult with smaller enclosures (i.e. in a large phone it's easier to hide a large battery, and they don't scale entirely proportionally to screen size).
i.e. the Pixel 5 will last about 10% longer than an iPhone 12 on a single charge, but it achieves this with a battery that is about 45% bigger (2,800 mAh vs 4,080mAh). Both have the same size screen (in fact, the iPhone is slightly larger).
The camera is often the reason i end up with a phone that's way bigger than I'd otherwise like. The Pixel 6XL has the better camera but otherwise I'd have been all over the 6 (or smaller if it had they done anything in that space). My Pixel 4 still feels way better sized when i go back to it periodically.
That's another thing I want from a phone that no OEM seems to want to make. Make the phone thicker, get rid of the camera bump, and fill the extra space with a bigger battery!
My Unihertz Jelly2 is much smaller than TFA is asking for (and has a shitty camera plus midrange CPU making it disqualified), but battery life is Just Fine. Making the phone significantly larger should easily allow for a large enough battery for a flagship processor.
There are small phones with decent battery performance in Android too. Zenfone 8 from last year is an example. But new small phones is a dying breed going forward with big players not interested in making them at all anymore. Only less known brands dab in making them or some budget phones.
There used to be plenty of small Android phones. They could make them again. Battery life or processor power might be a bit less, but they used to work fine. There's no good reason why they can't again.
Why does the author want an Android? The iPhone mini would do the job right? I have a iPhone mini for the same reasons of size, premium feel and price.
It would be cool to hear what the founder of Pebble has to say about "why Android". Has he said it anywhere else?
> I actually do now! I switched from Android back to iPhone in late 2021 because the Pixel 6 was too ridiculously large. This was my first iPhone since the OG iPhone.
> But only 5% of all iPhones sold are Minis (roughly 10m phones per year). This means that Apple may decide to kill the Mini. For Apple, 10m phones is peanuts. But for an independent company 10m units per year would be spectacular.
> If Apple kills the Mini, those people will need a new home. An Android phone (with Beeper for iMessage) might be an adequate alternative.
I'll speak for myself, but I don't think that the iPhone Mini users that chose the iPhone Mini for it's form factor will switch to Android. Personally, I'm all-in on the Apple ecosystem. I prefer the Mini, but I would chose an iPhone 13 Pro over any Android (large or small).
>[...] personally, after 6 months of iOS I am itching to get back to Android. Why? The notification system SUCKS on iOS compared to Android. It’s impossible to move files between apps. Hard to get any work done on it. Beautiful hardware though!
Co-incidentally I was just glad today morning that iPhone doesn't show the row of small notification icons on the top-bar all the time. And then noticed that notifications don't show on the home screen also. I pulled down the notification list and saw a ton of notifications - I said no thanks and left them all unopened.
I did switch from Android to iPhone recently. I think notifications on iPhone are way better, I get distracted way lesser. Tho I don't get many important or time-sensitive notifications. Just a bunch of transactional notifications.
The suggestions I'm seeing are yes hole punch, no hole punch, a screen you can use with one hand, just enough battery-filled thickness to have no camera bump, good camera, microsd, fingerprint sensor, headphone jack.
And one person wants a keyboard but I don't think they're suggesting that for this phone.
Once you decide if you want a hole punch or not, I see no issue with implementing the rest of those features in the same phone in a reasonable way.
The Homer was a car that Home Simpson built to exactly what they wanted without any tradeoffs for off the shelf components, trends, or sensibility of what currently was common.
It's also somewhat design by committee, with features like a more luxurious bubble for the adults, and a micro-bubble for the kids; presumably so you can ignore anything but the screams or silence.
I also suspect this fictional car might have been an ingredient in the market shifting from minivans to SUVs. Those don't have such great audio isolation but were even taller than the minivans (which were taller than station wagons). Or it could be the 'backup camera' finally reaching a tolerable price level.
Indeed. Those notches, hole-punches etc, I could do without. I very much prefer to have a bit of bezel and have a proper screen (preferably even with angular corners, rather than rounded corners). This also helps when handing the phone to somebody else to show them something... they have a place to hold the darn thing without accidentally swiping, tapping, or - worst of all - hitting the back button.
No, because there are so few of people with your opinion that those types of phones will not sell enough to recoup costs, much less make a profit. At most, you can buy a phone with a pop-up camera (the OnePlus 7T Pro is nice, although a few years old now) [0].
same. It's a shame OnePlus decided to drop the popup camera. They had a really solid mechanism. Going back to a screen with a notch or hole just feels primitive.
Front cameras are also useful for other stuff e.g. taking angled pictures with little visibility is much easier with the front facing camera because you can see what you're aiming at.
It can even take pictures in the dark because the display will be used as a floodlight, though in that case aiming doesn't really work unless the software brightening is sufficient to at least gain an idea.
Front camera also works as a mirror in a pinch, much easier than trying to aim the back camera then flipping the phone around and finding out how off you were.
Do people taking selfies even use the front camera? I feel like image quality is really rather poor for that use case but it's not my jam.
Nobody? I'm sort of in the same boat (I quite dislike video calls), but my extended family (from young to 60+) have started during pandemic and now continue to video call each other quite regularly - including group video calls.
As I said, not my preference and I rarely join, but for example my wife does video calls almost on a daily basis. So the "selfie" camera seems to be increasingly an important feature for the regular user.
I've seen it used once and to a disastrous result. I kinda feel like there are other workarounds too:
I remember one of the Motorola phones was designed for expansions, but that was pre-USB C. If you had a horizontally symmetrical phone, maybe widgets could solve the problem? Front facing and rear facing, while also being privacy respecting, no notch necessary, and similar resolution to boot. so maybe easier to source. Free up some room on the SOC and relieve some complexity while providing the added benefit of port protection. Presumably this could be applied to SD and obviously 3.5mm jacks.
Ok, let's just accept now that you live in an isolated bubble, if your experience with video calls is "I've seen it used once and to a disastrous result."
I'm not denying your experience, but it's not the experience of the vast majority of the modern world now, across all categories of people. Many people may not use video calls regularly, but most people have had more experience than "seen it used once."
I don't think they do. Meets and Zooms seem to be the way people have gone, I hadn't even heard of phone video calls becoming more common before this thread, and my family definitely hasn't done it.
The hole punch is a nice to have. A phone with a case that was half the area of a pixel 6 pro, and also had a top bezel would still have a perfectly usable screen.
On my G7 Play with LineageOS, I was able to "disable" the notch -- that is, draw a black bar around it, and have a proper rectangular display with a full-width status bar right below it.
Works great, especially considering the display is not quite small enough for me in the first place.
“and people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly“
So true... And my anecdotal observation suggest another detail that makes small unattractive to brands: the way my social circles happen to be, I crossed path with plenty of owners of various incarnations of the Xperia Compact (r.i.p.). If my observations where representative, the Compacts would come close to outnumbering iPhones. They all wanted a small phone, somewhat waterproof and with a reasonably good camera. Almost all of them identifying strongly with some outdoor hobby like cycling or rock climbing, but wouldn't want a dedicated "outdoor" or "sports" phone. So far so good, looks like a pattern. But they have another thing in common: none of them would ever consider buying a high end phone (the Compacts were, or reasonably close) at or near release price.
Also I'm a little surprised you're hoping an online petition will work after your prior experience trying to influence your acquirers. I presume you saw the inside of Fitbit / Google and how decisions are made...
probably because eric has a history of pd from a customer frustration pov whereas your well articulated explanation mainly represents manufacturers' pov.
btw, such kind of math-checks-out logic is what keeps someone from developing the iphone in 2004. everything about mobile then made sense...to carriers and manufacturers.
I suspect that part of the problem is that, as measured by actual purchases, people don't really prioritize small size and displays that much.
Look at how long all of the requirement lists posted around these threads are. Some people really want a nice camera, some a headphone jack, some a SD card or big battery etc. I would expect that it's a fact of life in a small phone that you can't fit everything anyone might want, but everyone has a different list of must-haves, making it much harder to make one device that all of the small-phone-wanter market will actually buy.
And price. If you really want some one-off thing, you've gotta pay more for it. Would you pay $2k, $3k, more for a great small phone? Seems likely that such prices would help a lot at getting them made. But in reality, people seem to refuse to pay more than a modest markup over the mainstream model with tens of millions produced. Sorry folks, I don't think it works like that.
> Some people really want a nice camera, some a headphone jack, some a SD card or big battery etc
We used to have these things in small form factors. Those of us annoyed by where the big companies forced the direction of development are mostly very aware that things have regressed hard.
All the comments about how it will be too expensive and difficult to source unusually sized parts make me wonder how they make something like the Hammerhead Karoo for $400 - an android device with a 3.2" sunlight readable reflective screen (supposedly even more expensive), custom software. etc. Is the market for a bike computer so much larger than that for a smaller phone? I don't think they're burning VC, it was crowdfunded IIRC.
Thanks for the kind words! I love the "helped" preface because it's exactly right, design is a team sport and I strongly believe in giving credit where due. Ben Chen (https://www.benchendesign.com/) was the creative lead on EVO 3D. I lead the technical side of the design for that one but he set the vision and the aesthetic. Great dude to work with too.
> You will be very, very hard pressed to source a pre-existing, high quality, non-exclusive 5.4" display with a hole punch.
I think GP probably needs to be more flexible about their "must-have"'s. If you could get a nice phone with a small screen, would a small bezel on top for a camera be such a disaster?
I go to aliexpress, and I see a number of 4" screens. Some even come with capacitive touch sensors mounted on top.
Yes, they are low-resolution by today's standards, something like 800x480. Still, they are available for those who might be considering to produce a really compact phone. Instead, they go to high-end coffee machines and the like, and to RPi tinkerers.
My hunch that the limiting factor would mostly be the battery. Modern radios and modern CPUs and GPUs consume more, and you don't want to market a very slow phone, or a phone that has 6 hours of daily usage worth of battery. And you can't hide as much battery behind a small screen.
> Big companies are drowning in market data. They know some people really, really want small phones. But it's a long-tail opportunity they're willfully ignoring, and people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly. I've been in the meetings, small phone advocacy goes nowhere.
I love my iPhone 12 mini and prefer the form factor, but will go bigger, because of battery life.
The iPhone 13 Mini improved battery life significantly. The A15 series is significantly more efficient and they managed to increase the battery capacity. It should last somewhere in the range of 30% longer than the 12 Mini.
Why would that form factor succeed in the Android space?
---
I see these meme on tech sites all the time: “oh phones are too big I just want something simple”. That is a valid sentiment that I think is shared by basically no average consumer. For a lot of people, phones are their primary computing devices, so a big screen is nice there. Bigger phones allow for more battery capacity. Aging populations like them because you can use screen zoom features to really blow up that text size without making the effective viewport too small.
And…people just like big stuff. I know that’s simplistic and a little condescending, but then look at SUV and truck sales.
These "slow iPhone 13 mini" sales are more than all Google Pixel phones sold in a year. Think about that.
I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews and modern American perception. Why is being able to buy niche products somehow not a worthy thing to be desired?
I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews
Because so many on HN have been indoctrinated into the "scale at all costs" mentality.
It demonstrates the difference between HN and the real world.
On HN, if you can't serve a billion people, your product is niche. In the real world, billions of people earn a very nice living making niche products.
It's why so many people on HN don't understand Panic, or its PlayDate. They don't understand artisan anything. They've forgotten the whole hipster movement, which still exists in pockets of the world. They can't grok that there are companies that have been in business for hundreds of years making products one at a time — by hand.
"X doesn't scale" is HN for "I know nothing about how the world works."
>> I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews
> Because so many on HN have been indoctrinated into the "scale at all costs" mentality.
HN also has many fanboys that slavishly celebrate the decisions of certain prestigious companies as the best possible ones, because that prestigious company made it. Other decisions can be assumed to be inferior because, if they had merit, the company would have picked that instead.
IMHO, a lot of technology has plateaued, to the point where the hip new thing is objectively a regression that just looks different.
Maybe we could have a market for very high end phones that cost $3000, but I haven't seen anyone try to fill that niche yet. Maybe it isn't there?
Even if it was there, that doesn't mean the phone would be small. People who want small phones aren't necessarily wealthy, so they would only be going after the market for the intersection of 'wealthy + want small phone'... which might be a very small market and not worth pursuing.
That market absolutely exists, and a few people have tried to serve it over the years. Here's an old example, a Samsung phone promoted by Jackie Chan that cost about $3,000 back in 2012:
I think this is not exactly what GP was talking about. These are normal phones with an expensive marketing gimmick.
The "RED Hydrogen One," by that fancy camera company is closer I think. At least it had some story that could hypothetically have ended with a compelling technological reason for it to exist (RED is supposed to know cameras). Although, it didn't seem to work out either, but with a sample size of 1 it could be a fluke of poor execution.
I'm surprised none of the really consumer-oriented camera companies have broken into smartphones. Camera stuff seems like more of a selling point for smartphones, than phone stuff. But, it seems like they never really want to dive in fully.
Yeah, this came up when I was looking around. I'd call it a case of not diving in fully. Since it is really just a rebrand of a phone from some other company (albeit one for which they provided the optics).
I'd be very careful about suggesting that failure proves there is no market for something.
Many PC companies failed before Apple succeeded. Apple itself failed to the point of almost being acquired by Sun before succeeding by buying NeXT and shipping some hit products in the form of colourful iMacs and iPods with click-wheels.
The biggest problem with luxury products is that they have almost nothing to do with the product's tangible features and everything to do with whether you can establish a valuable brand. We live in a world where people spend thousands of dollars on fancy numbers that we have a kind of gentleman's agreement signify that they "own" a jpeg anyone can copy.
I suggest that there is absolutely a market for ridiculously priced phones, but the problem is not hand-crafting a phone with rare materials, the problem is creating the collective hallucination that owning such a phone will make other people envy you.
Apple actually sold some solid gold watches. There was a market for a $18,000 Apple Watch. It wasn't something worth sustaining in perpetuity, but there was a market. They also launched ridiculously priced accessories from Hermes, and there is still a market for them almost a decade later.
People will pay large amounts of money for exclusive items, but it takes a particular set of skills to launch something and convince the world it's the must-have accessory of the moment.
Samsung made some folding phone which were pretty close to $3,000 on release IIRC. Pushing-the-envelope android phones can reach eye watering prices, and early adopters always pay up too. Personally I would rather wait for the 3-4th generation of anything THAT wild as the tech was very much not ready for launch.
Grains of sand getting into the hinge and mandatory factory-installed screen protectors are not things I want to deal with on a purchase that expensive.
The current folding generation launching this year (4th Gen) is likely to be the next big thing, rumors are huge price drop and likely a more polished experience as production is ramping up for more units.
The limitation to making niche phones are the stupid, sclerotic, CARRIERS--not the manufacturers. It's the carrier gatekeeping that prevents niche phones from forming.
We need a ruling like from back in the Bell System era where you are allowed to bring customer equipment to the network without the network owner permission.
Also consider he's specifically appealing to makers of premium phones - you can bet Google and Samsung care a lot about scale. And to the parent's point about the iPhone 13 mini's sales still being more than all Pixels: ok, so then consider the already much smaller Pixel market share and how many people are left at the % of iPhone sales that the mini made up.
I'd love for this to happen, signed the petition, and will hope for the best, but I think even if there would be a decent market for this the big players don't care to make that bet.
Saying that HN readers (who are quite diverse, btw) "know nothing about how the world works" or "don't understand" things in this context is just lazy thinking.
We understand just fine. It's not difficult to comprehend the appeal of customized, handmade work. The appeal is clear.
It's just that it's completely irrelevant in the context of this thread. Because you can't design and make smartphones by hand, one at a time. So what are you even talking about?
And it took Panic a decade to release the Playdate and it is still back ordered for over a year. Hardware has to “scale” to get manufacturing capacity and scale economies.
Much of that can be chalked down to the fact that Apple doesn't have that many models they actively sell, so the models that they do tend to have way more than any individual Android model, and that the mini is the cheapest iPhone in the 13 line. I know a few people who went for the mini because it was marginally cheaper.
I went with the mini because the new SE is fraking bigger with less screen. The mini is just about the limit of what i want to put in my pocket. If they get any bigger, im going watch with cell and leaving these phablets at home.
Do y all have really small pockets or something? For women, I get it, your pants don't come with pockets and that sucks. But for guys? I've had a Samsung Note phone in my pocket since the Note 2, they where the model that invented the phablet moniker... Never had an issue. Do I just make better pant choices than most people?
Actually, in certain situations, yes. My running shorts have pockets that barely fit iPhone mini. Yes, I know there are other accessories that I can buy to fit giant phones in but I rather not.
While I agree with the sentiment of your post, I'm not sure if Pixel are the best example, as they have demand that they don't satisfy.
For example in Spain, the Pixel 6 Pro was only sold for a few days in February, then sold out, then returned a few days ago - so it only seems to start being consistently available now, and it's a 2021 phone. Oh, and only the 128 GB model is sold here. I had to ask an Australian friend to mail a 512 GB one to me!
And at least, they do sell it here. In most countries, you can't even buy it.
Compare to iPhone where you can get every model with every storage capacity consistently, in Spain, and in the overwhelming majority of countries in the world.
I've even seriously considered switching to iPhone for this very reason, by the way.
NRE costs on a phone are easily measured in the $Millions. Your niche has to either (a) have enough volume to dilute those costs; or (b) be willing to pay a lot more per unit to cover them.
It's not a "bad thing" about HN or American perceptions -- it's economic reality: it just isn't cost effective for the big incumbents to pursue, and it's (likely) beyond the scope of a grass-roots, Kickstarter-style effort.
> These "slow iPhone 13 mini" sales are more than all Google Pixel phones sold in a year. Think about that.
That really doesn't say much. Google has never figured how to sell hardware, nor shown the will to learn. If Google was trying to sabotage the sales of the Pixel line, it could probably not do a better job.
I touch on this on the site. 5% of iPhones sold are minis. That's 10m sold per year! That is more than enough demand to cover the NREs and costs of making a phone.
Agreed. I hope the rumors are false and that they'll continue to make the Mini. However, 5% does not mean much if market research proves that those people would buy a regular iPhone anyway if they drop the Mini.
I think there is also some competition with the iPhone SE. Even though the Mini is not intended to be a budget phone, it is 100 Euro cheaper than the non-mini. So, I can imagine a chunk of people would buy it for its lower price if the iPhone SE didn't exist. Even more if you consider that the Mini actually has a larger screen than the SE.
It's as good as guaranteed that the mini won't be returning this year - dummy models of the upcoming line which are used to size cases have made their way to the usual leakers, and even before that the front panels of the line were leaked. No mini, unfortunately :/
I'd be fine if they made it a biennial release. I don't need to upgrade my phone more than that anyway.
I feel like my plan right now is to hope with the iPhone 14 launch, the 13 mini will continue to be sold with a price drop, and then I'll upgrade my 12 mini to the 13 mini and get the battery improvement. I love the size of this phone and hope I'm never forced back to the gigantic "normal-sized" phones that we've gotten stuck with the past decade.
That said, Apple does tend to keep their designs for a fair while, so it's possible there will be one next year, or that it will become the new SE at some point.
You won't get one, unfortunately, both because there's no motivation for Apple to make it, and because battery life would be an insurmountable issue, at least with current tech. The battery life in the Mini is already significantly inferior to the other iPhones in the line; Apple's only going to be willing to push that so far before it's an obviously-compromised product and they would just refuse to ship it.
For one - most of the iPhone Mini sale is because of 'Halo effect', die hard fans who anyway would have bought an iPhone, bought the mini version. An Android phone maker will not have that brand pull or halo effect to establish a new category, so it would be no where near that 10M number.
Second, iPhone or Mac devices are known for hardware and software integration. That translates among other things to good battery life (similar to RAM. Apple never talks about RAM).
iPhone Mini has been weak in battery department [1], one of the factor in its low sale as compared to bigger device. A Mini Android device will have mini batteries, that means it will have no chance in h* to last through the day - the minimum requirement in this day and age.
> most of the iPhone Mini sale is because of 'Halo effect', die hard fans who anyway would have bought an iPhone, bought the mini version.
Citation needed? A lot of people love to jump to the conclusion that nobody wants small phones. My personal experience does not align with that conclusion. I'm happy to accept this conclusion if you have some kind of evidence for it, but the linked article just discusses battery life, which was greatly improved in the iPhone 13 Mini anyway.
If you’re a diehard fan why would you buy a subpar phone, and not the latest flagship? Smaller phones imply less usage because some things aren’t as pleasant as on a bigger screen.
I guess I am a diehard fan of only small iPhones, as since 2007 my lineup has been: iPhone 3, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone SE, and currently 12 Mini.
As far as I am concerned, the mini IS the flagship. I would never even consider buying one of the larger models, as I consider them to be subpar, unpleasant devices to carry and to use. I'd choose to carry no phone over having to carry a full-sized phone, they have become too large to be considered conveniently portable.
For me, the perfect smart phone would be the same size and shape as a credit card, edge-to-edge screen on all sides, and approximately 3mm thick. And it would run iOS of course.
The mini line up is not “subpar.” There is utility in a smaller form factor that is equal to or greater than the the value of the better specs in a large form factor. If that weren’t true then everyone would be walking around with an iPad instead of an iPhone.
5% seems quite small and not worth the trouble. It might be worth it if a small phone generated 5% in additional sales, but most people buying a small iPhone would likely buy a normal-sized iPhone if no small version was available rather than making the switch to Android.
My point is that 5% is probably an irrelevant number because it’s not 5% additional sales. If the mini wasn’t available, many people would get a normal iPhone instead of switch to Android. So the net sales is closer to 0. Apple seems to agree with this sentiment and there will be no mini starting with the iPhone 14: https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/14/exclusive-iphone-14-coming-in...
Phone sales aren’t driven by switching, and haven’t been for a while, they’re about upgrading. Apple knows this better than anyone.
For example: I upgrade my phone every two years or so, so long as I like the new phones. If I don’t like the new phones, I wait as long as possible.
People that like smaller phones won’t necessarily leave the iPhone if they kill the Mini - they will just keep their current phones for as long as possible. And that can indeed hurt sales, even if Apple doesn’t lose market share.
That's why I picked up an iPhone 13 Mini. It's a really great phone and when I need a new phone six years from now, I'm hoping there's something as good to replace it.
Is there a world where the iPhone mini is necessary or desirable when the iPhone SE also exists? I don't see a need for both, especially when they run the same processor under the hood.
I use an iPhone SE 2016, which uses the same chassis as the iPhone 5/5s.
I tried an iPhone 6S for a year before I got this phone. Couldn't stand the size. The current SE is the same size as the 6S. I'm basically stuck at a dead-end of phone size.
The current SE is not compact by historical standards. I'm not saying all phones need to be smaller, I just want one decent option.
The iPhone SE is a full-sized phone. It just happens to be obsolete in the marketplace, and the other full-sized phones it competes against have become even fuller sized.
I know more than a few people who got Iphones only because there were no or too hard to find Android phones in a smaller form factor. I wouldn't be surprised if at least half of that 5% would switch back in the no-mini scenario
If the iPhone mini is managing to capture all of the "I want a small flagship phone" market, it's worth it. As long as the Mini exists, it's impossible for other manufacturers to try and compete.
Your argument suggests that there are actually 2 smart phone markets. One for iPhones, one for everything else. I think this is a fairly reasonable assumption for the majority of consumers.
Let's assume very few people are switching ecosystems at this point based on form factor. That would mean Apple made a new product to cannibalize 5% of their existing market. No similar product exists in the android ecosystem. It seems reasonable that an android phone maker could get similar market share but have these sales come from a combination of their existing sales and competitors sales.
The point is that 5% (or 10m phones) does not make sense for Apple to continue to build, but that has no relation to whether it's worth it to another company.
I half suspect that Apple will be coming back with another small phone a few years down the line and then a cycle will continue where they will always have something like an SE or mini, but it won't ever be flagship level.
I feel like that has been the problem with the Mini. I love mine (which I got because I was fed up with Pixel and Android in general), but I know I only have it because I got in at the right time. My wife bought an iPhone at the wrong time and hers is comically large. She would have happily bought an iPhone Mini if it had been available that year. By the time she needs a new iPhone, it will be another year where the only options are gigantic.
> Why would that form factor succeed in the Android space?
Because it's not Apple selling them and Android smartphone manufacturers operate with much lower margins.
Take Motorola for example, which isn't even one of the 10 largest smartphone manufacturers. They released ~30 different smartphone models in the past year alone, so they apparently make money, even if they don't sell millions of units per model.
Yet none of the models released in the past year has a height shorter than 159mm or a weight lighter than 155g.
I believe the reason why no smartphone manufacturer offers small phones anymore is not because they want to, but rather because there is some non-obvious reason why they can't. My personal theory is because it's difficult to get proper display panels for smaller phones nowadays. The fabs producing the panels switched to larger sizes due to demand and efficiency, which resulted in no smaller panels with up-to-date specs (high-refresh rate, HDR, low power consumption, ...) to be available. I'd appreciate if somebody could proof me wrong, as that'd be quite a bummer otherwise.
I think this is the main reason, and why only Apple can afford to make a small slab phone. They can still make some margin with 5% of a massive number, while others can't make any.
Foldables seem like a better compromise here, and hopefully more like the zflip/razr get in this $700-800 range with stock android, good cameras, and decent battery life. The zflip 3 has been sold for $800, just give me stock android and I'd be a buyer. I'd be ok with a slightly slower processor if it means a better battery life, but within 10-20% of a flagship. Between a $450 6.1 inch Pixel 6a, or a $700-800 folding phone, it's going to be kind of tough to compete with a smaller slab phone if it's going to have to make more compromises to stay small.
I'd love a Nexus 4 sized phone again, but these aren't bad options, if you want small, go folding, or get a 6a. I'm sure the mini is a good option if you're ok with iOS.
Foldables are a crappy solution. I do not want a tablet. I have no desire to watch videos on my phone, and I don't need a huge screen for any of the things I do on my phone regularly -- text, listen to music, occasionally browse HN and reddit, take photos. I understand that they fold up to essentially become weird-aspect ratio very thick phones... but that's not desirable for me either, especially at the foldable price point of ~$1000+.
nit: Foldables aren't for video, aspect ratio is far from 16:9. Effective video size is not much bigger than non foldable. It's great for reading web/book/pdf.
I'm inclined to think that applies more to Americans than people generally. Europeans and Australians can be quite content with smaller vehicles, smaller properties, and quite frankly smaller lifestyles.
I don't think it's as much a culture difference as you think, more like the environment where we use the cars.
I'm from Europe, living in bigger European city, and I have a small car (3-door RAV4). I bought it so I can drive and park easily in the city and go up hills and mountains when I leave the city once a month.
And if I'm honest, that is the best car I could afford. I see lots of rich people with bigger and bigger SUVs cruising in the city in Germany: G wagons, BMWs, Audis, Volkswagen Touaregs, Porsche Cayennes everywhere.
I went on a road trip in the US, rented an SUV that would be huge and impractical here, but there, it actually felt small. The roads were wide, traffic wasn't bad, parking was easy. I loved it.
If I lived in the countryside in Europe where I need to transport stuff for my ranch/farm (and if I could afford it), I'd definitely consider buying a pickup truck.
The same goes for properties. The reason why I lived in a 30sqm apartment with my wife was that is all I could afford while living in the city, close to good job opportunities. I would have been obviously happier if I could have a 300sqm house.
Okay, let's remove the "obviously" from my quote. Everybody is different.
In my case, I don't see why I would be sad over having a bit more place. It would be nice to have a place for an office, a small home gym, bigger kitchen, dining room, terrace with a BBQ, etc.
I'm not saying it would solve every problem in my life, but it would make a couple of things less inconvenient.
It's a three door version, 3860 mm long. It's about as much as the shortest Mini model. It's amongst the shortest cars around here, Renault Twingo, and "smart" cars are shorter, but nothing else comes to my mind that would be significantly shorter than the RAV4.
American here with a Smart Fortwo, but I may be an outlier. Dead simple to park in the city though, and I hear lots of people complaining about parking, so… I don’t know why everyone buys those enormous cars here. :)
China loves the Pro Max - it outsold the Pro there [1], and my understanding (based largely on hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt) is that they generally love large phones over there.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk of Germans as environmentally conscious. Car culture is usually one of the first things that comes up when someone talks about Germany.
I have lived in Germany for five years and this is absolutely true. Even many students have cars, which was completely surreal/absurd to me, since I didn't have any fellow students in The Netherlands with a car (only bikes). I'd cycle to work every day (22 km for the round trip), I'd regularly get comments from Germans that I was crazy to cycle that distance through all weather.
Watching German politics more closely during those years, I have seen that choices between: is better for car owners, is better for something else, gets decided in favor of is better for car owners 90% of the times. Heck, even some members of the Green Party are very cozy with the car industry (e.g. Kretschmann).
> I'd cycle to work every day (22 km for the round trip), I'd regularly get comments from Germans that I was crazy to cycle that distance through all weather.
The Germans probably don't know that with 2cm of snow, all the other means of transport, including the Amsterdam metro, stop working. So bicycle it is. I loved my 25km (round trip) bike commute when I lived there, it was such a great way to clear my head before/after work.
> I'd regularly get comments from Germans that I was crazy to cycle that distance through all weather.
It is a bit unusual outside of the Netherlands and Denmark.
I tried to cycle to work 8km or so and it was fine until I had to cross a slope. And since this slope was etched by the nearby river, it went through the whole city, so there wasn't any way around it.
Took all the fun out of it honestly, especially during heatwaves.
I think your comment is a good example of the disconnect in how you and I seem to mean different things when we say environmentally conscious. In my opinion, driving a car every day isn't environmentally conscious, regardless the size of the car. These days, the difference between two modern cars is not that big, they're both still big polluters. You don't need to drive a 5-person car to work alone every day, nor to the store, nor to the gym, but it is what very many people in Germany do. Whether that car is big or small does not make that big of a difference when you compare it to the alternative of taking the public transport, cycling or walking. I understand the alternatives are not as comfortable, but that is a matter of choice — it is a choice to build cities in a way that favors cars over pedestrians and cyclists.
A simple example of what I mean is traffic lights. I've lived in many European countries, including Germany, and travelled a very fair bit in the rest. In Germany, traffic lights are green for cars for a long time and green for pedestrians a very short time (feel free to measure this at any traffic light in your city). In countries where infrastructure is planned around humans, it's the other way around.
Cycling is another example of this. Germany doesn't have "bad weather for cycling". People cycle to work in winter in Helsinki and don't bat an eye. The difference is infrastructure. Helsinki has not only built the roads, lights and the rest around it, but they also ensure it's in good condition. When it snows, bike paths often get cleaned before car roads. It's a matter of choice. I bring up Helsinki because it's easier to compare. Netherlands and the like are so far ahead everyone else in humane cities that the comparisons are hard to make. Helsinki is a good example because their developments are recent and go to show that you can choose to live a different way.
Well, I was talking about reputation explicitly. Buying a small car instead of a big one is generally perceived as environmentally conscious by most. Most international colleagues I deal with, and got my anecdotes from, are from France, Switzerland, Norway and the US. They are frequently amazed by all those little things we do that they consider proof of that. Whether we actually are environmentally friendly in a measurable way is an entirely different topic. :-)
I have lived in Southern Germany for ~5 years and lived in The Netherlands before and after. Germans most definitely (at least in the south) have bigger cars on average.
It's nice to have that space for your house, but on the other hand your kids can't go to school by themselves, and neither can you jump on your bike for some shopping and be back in ten minutes.
Bigger houses and more (sometimes mandatory) parking also means everything is further apart and making cars more needed even when going between stores.
Right, it's not that we don't want bigger houses, apartments or cars, we just can't justify it in terms of cost.
I'd love to get my wife a bigger car, so she wouldn't be scared of driving in the snow, but just buying it would be three times the price (or more) compared to the small car she's currently driving.
I have the 13 Mini. Multiple people have asked me what it was and then commented that they wish they knew about it when they got their current phone.
I think sales are probably limited significantly by the marketing plan of both Apple and the carriers that sell phones - I'm sure that the larger phones are more profitable.
Agreed. I love my 12 Mini, and my SE's before that. I'm also anti-case so the phone looks extra small compared to most. Fun to have someone take our photo with the phone, cause they always ask how ancient it is and are shocked to hear it is newer than the phone they have! Non-existent marketing doesn't help
My girlfriend liked the mini, but didn’t get it partially because it doesn’t feature the 3 cameras. As long as the mini is positioned as a down brand phone, even for technical reasons, some of the interested market is excluded
One thing I don’t think people appreciate is just how impressively compact the Minis are. Every bit of space is used up. I doubt any Android OEM (with the exception of maybe Samsung) could get make a comparable device.
Unless they used something akin to a laptop webcam, there simply isn’t enough space for a third camera.
There's just not enough space for all the random features people want in a small form factor phone and keep it thin-ish. The Pro Max camera group alone is 1/5-1/4 of the back real estate on the 12 mini.
What kind of illoyal loser would denounce their wife in public, offer to “trade” her like some property, all over some completely meaningless bullshit cliché complaint about their choices of style?
Give me a break. You know damn well that the GP didn't really want to trade his wife and it was a joke, yet you felt compelled to gallop in here on your steed and bravely proclaim - on a tech message board, in 2022 - that you are against treating human beings as property.
If you thought the joke was distasteful, say it was distasteful. But pretending it was serious and loudly letting us all know you are against trading human beings is some of the lamest virtual signalling I've ever seen.
What kind of illoyal loser would denounce their wife in public, offer to “trade” her like some property, all over some completely meaningless bullshit cliché complaint about their choices of style?
Wow, angry much? I suggest contacting your local mental health crisis hotline before you turn your internet rage into something people actually care about. In the United States, just dial 988.
Failing that, try getting a sense of humor. They're nice.
Similarly, the F150 is the best selling vehicle in the US. #2 is the Silverado, and #3 is the Dodge Ram.
Clearly, this whole 'sedan' concept is a failed form factor, every manufacturer should only make pickup trucks. Why shoot for less than the #1 market spot?
Funnily, cars suffer from this same exact issue, but worse! Just like expanding phone screen size leads to suboptimal software on small screen sizes that devs don't target any more... expanding car size leads to safety compromises for sedans. If my 2000s Civic gets T-boned by a 2022 F150, I'll probably die, simply because the 2022 F150 will crush my car like a tank rolling over a tin can. When I try to drive around in my sedan at night, I'm constantly blinded because truck manufacturers don't account for low seat heights any more with beam cutoffs.
Who would buy a sedan any more when you're screwed over this way? With phones and vehicles, we're stuck in this prisoner's dilemma situation where larger sizes lead to less desirability of small sizes, and the cycle repeats over and over again.
Same thing happens with public transit/car usage -- as more people use cars, public transit thins out, deals with more traffic on the roads, and becomes scarier because there are fewer "normal" people on public transit to make you feel safe from crime.
Curious if there's an research on how to escape from this kind of death spiral -- my suspicion is that the only real way out is regulation, because otherwise there's no way to overcome the self-reinforcing impact of these decisions.
> “oh phones are too big I just want something simple”. That is a valid sentiment that I think is shared by basically no average consumer. For a lot of people, phones are their primary computing devices, so a big screen is nice there. Bigger phones allow for more battery capacity.
My way of dealing with it is two phones. Besides my smartphone, I still use my more than ten-year-old Nokia when I do not want to take the big smartphone with me. Of course, it only has phone, SMS and a clock. But I usually do not need anything else when I go for a walk or meet up with friends. I just want to be reachable in case there is a problem.
Its old battry still lasts quite a long time, and I have it switched off most of the time anyway. So I can go 7+ days without recharging.
Do you still use your phone as a phone? Because I personally stopped using the phone features long ago, and I suspected many are in the same basket. So even for a minimalist/backup device, it would still need to be a "smart" phone, for note taking, calendar sync and what not.
Yes, I am indeed primarily using phone and SMS for mobile communication. I have never been on Facebook or WhatsApp and generally do not like too much distraction. If I am in the mood to socialise with people, I call them, email them or suggest a joint activity, but typically from home. And as I have been working from home office (or camper-van) even pre-COVID, I am prefering my laptop for email, calendar, to-dos, Web-browsing, etc. I think this reduces the need to carry a smart phone around quite a lot, compared to many others.
What could change that would be the availability of a smartphone that turns into a PC/laptop when connected to a docking station. I suspect that Microsoft is pursuing such a plan with the integration of Android into Windows 11. Let's see ...
If you hadn't included the link to Macrumors, I'd have guess that the mini sells poorly because the iPhone SE is available and much cheaper. Personally I really surprised that the SE doesn't sell more.
Anecdotally, I wanted a Mini, but the lack of top-end cameras being available made me hesitant. I ended up buying a SE, since the neither phone was exactly what I wanted, but the SE was so much cheaper.
- people tend to correlate size and price, and by default the correlation is direct (for some things it's inverse), so at similar capabilities (and thus prices) consumers will tend to go with the larger version
- for a smartphone specifically, there's a direct relationship between battery size and device size, and battery life is a really valuable convenience
The iPhone 13 mini has a 2400 mAh battery, the 13 has 3200. 33% more battery capacity is a lot, and at 2400mAh I don't think the mini doesn't survive an entire day of relatively heavy use without a charge.
> for a smartphone specifically, there's a direct relationship between battery size and device size, and battery life is a really valuable convenience
As the largest consumer of energy is the display of a smartphone, you don't need the same battery size to get the same runtime in a smaller phone. Also by increasing the depth of the smartphone by just 1-2 millimeters you can offset the smaller area available for the battery.
> As the largest consumer of energy is the display of a smartphone, you don't need the same battery size to get the same runtime in a smaller phone.
The battery capacity grows much faster than the display energy consumption, and it's not even a fight: at otherwise equivalent hardware, the larger phone has always had better battery life than the smaller one in every iPhone generation.
The minis both suffered significant criticism due to battery life issues, compared to their larger sibling.
> Also by increasing the depth of the smartphone by just 1-2 millimeters you can offset the smaller area available for the battery.
You can do the same on both smaller and larger form factors so that's not an advantage of the SFF phones.
And much to my dismay Apple remains very much not a fan of that: after having increased the phone depth to long-forgotten heights of 8.3mm (a chonk not seen since the 4S's 9.3), it's been reduced back down to 7.65 in the 13 (up a hair from the 12's 7.4). I fear an eventual return to the dark days of the 6S/7 and their 7.1mm you could shave with (but couldn't pick your phone off of the table for lack of ability to grip the thing without using your fingernails to pry it off).
> The battery capacity grows much faster than the display energy consumption, and it's not even a fight: at otherwise equivalent hardware, the larger phone has always had better battery life than the smaller one in every iPhone generation.
As an example, the Z5 Compact had a 2700mah battery in basically something ~1mm thicker than a 13 mini, which has a ~2400mah battery. The Z5 Compact is also a 7 year old phone, which didn't have wireless charging.
> The iPhone 13 mini has a 2400 mAh battery, the 13 has 3200. 33% more battery capacity is a lot, and at 2400mAh I don't think the mini doesn't survive an entire day of relatively heavy use without a charge.
Every iPhone person I know has complained about the 13 Pro being significantly thicker and heavier than the previous models. Literally, things like "it feels like a brick in my hand." Making phones thicker/heavier is an HN meme that is completely out of touch with what normies want. Consider that for most people, the phone is their primary device, and one they hold in their hand for ~6h a day.
one of the reasons newer iphones "feel like a brick" is that they transitioned to heavier materials (stainless steel instead of aluminum) and because the corners are now squared. rounding corners often has the effect of making things seem thinner as well as usually making things more pleasant to hold. I agree with you that these users probably don't want a thicker iphone, but I would bet if you focused on perceived bulkiness in the industrial design, you could sneek in a slightly larger battery and still give the impression of a less bulky device.
> one of the reasons newer iphones "feel like a brick" is that they transitioned to heavier materials (stainless steel instead of aluminum)
What do you mean by newer iPhones? They use stainless steel since 2017 in the models X, XS (Max), 11 Pro (Max), 12 Pro (Max) and 13 Pro (Max), so it's nothing new.
Your anecdote vs my anecdote here, but I have never, not even one time, heard someone complain about the thickness or weight of an iPhone. I highly doubt the average user would even notice let alone care if you made the device a bit thicker.
This would probably be a dealbreaker for a lot of people. Unihertz makes small android phones that are on the thicker side, and I've been hesitant to buy one because of their girth (despite there not being any alternative small android phones on the market).
The iphone 13 is 7.65mm. The Unihertz Jelly is 16.5.
Apple hasn’t made a phone thicker than 10mm since the 3GS, and that was 12.3 (up from the original 2G’s 11.6 because of the rounded plastic back vs flat aluminum).
The numbers on that site are a bit vague and I'm having a hard time making out the chart due to the colours, but they still sold millions of iPhone 13 Minis, right? Plus, you should probably add up the mini + SE as well for "small(-ish) phone demand".
I think you can make a profitable niche selling smaller phones. Most people don't want a 12" laptop either as they consider it too small, but some people do and various companies still make a profit designing and selling them. I don't quite understand why it's so different for phones.
Apple never releases a "pro" mini -- with the same camera/processor as the larger variants. Thinking back, the iPhone 5s was near the perfect size for my pockets.
These days I find myself leaving my phone more and more, only taking it when I probably need a camera.
Another under-mentioned reason is that iPhones have more efficient processors that generate less heat, and also need less RAM to perform equivalently.
Whereas, fitting a top-line Snapdragon into a small phone is a challenge. There’s a reason why top-tier phones have copper heatpipes, vapor chambers, and so on. All things no iPhone has or needs.
You could still do a small Android phone, but you might have to abandon the idea of including a Snapdragon 8.
> So, by all accounts, the iPhone mini has been an extremely slow seller.
This narrative is cited a lot, and fueled rumors that Apple would kill the mini for iPhone 13. They didn't. So clearly it's profitable enough for them even though it's a comparatively low-volume product.
I think the issue with small form factor on Android is whether too many apps will have broken UI on such a small screen. Software support has been the issue with other innovative android phones, such as the LG Wing and even the original Samsung Fold.
> fueled rumors that Apple would kill the mini for iPhone 13. They didn't.
Apple plans pretty far ahead and moves slowly. When a phone goes on sale (like the iPhone 12 mini) the successor is already pretty far along in the pipeline, and I think it's unlikely they would cancel the successor based on a few weeks of sales data. They would at least wait until after christmas, at which point the 13 mini was probably already almost ready, at which point it probably doesn't make sense to cancel it anymore.
So if Apple nixes a product because it lacks demand, I would expect that to be after two years of sales. The decision might have been made already after the first year of iPhone 12 mini, but the decision would not affect the iPhone 13 lineup, only the iPhone 14 lineup.
You could see this slow product cycle when Apple failed to jump on the big phone trend. When the iPhone 5 came out, they underestimated the market for huge phones, and it took them two years to course correct and jump on the phablet bandwagon with the 6/6+. (And they had a phantastic quarter when they did since everyone has been waiting for a big iPhone for two years)
it's a sort of selection bias, it's only because of a niche unmet need that people take to their blogs to complain - so the only people clamoring are the one not getting what they want
same way the universe is perfectly made for us because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here, ya'know ?
I like to use the story of one of my parents. Big tall guy, never used technology, big fingers and always complained buttons were too small etc etc.
Now the guy loves his big iPad and his iPhone that he wouldn't go any size smaller because he'd struggle to see what's on the screen. The only challenge he has now is he likes the bigger phone, but struggles to keep it in his pockets when working, when you add in a protective cover.
People don't often know what they want, they're just driven by what they've had and whether they think it has worked for them, which most people can justify their own decision.
I do think however, that there will become a point where phones simply are too big. I'm just not sure how far off we are from that.
From looking at other sites, the SE greatly outsells the mini (22M in 2020, projected 30M in 2022). It is typically Apple's #2 seller. If you add that in with the mini numbers, then it tells a different story.
Also, during the pandemic, faceid didn't work in public. People looking for a small phone had to choose between a more expensive model with more cameras and cheaper phone with working biometric authentication.
That skews all sorts of market share stats. Anyway, annual sales by model (the SEs are usually released at a different time of year) would make for a more meaningful comparison than calendar Q1 sales starting after Christmas and ending a few weeks after the SE launch.
This is the problem with mobile stuff. It's always "one size fits all" and "fuck you if it doesn't work for you, too bad." I'm so tired of it I've just given up on normal smartphones. There's really nothing they add to your life when you look closely. I have a flip phone running "kai OS" now (which is actually pretty neat but I don't bother with a data plan) and a Linux PDA. I don't miss owning a smartphone at all, they're terrible.
Not the same size, the comparisons are misleading as both those phones look small compared to the 13 max. The SE has a form factor that matches many Android phones, small-phoners (like me) want to go smaller than that if possible.
I had the previous SE from years back and it's still my preferred size, the current mini is significantly bigger than it.
As an aside, I had to switch to the 12 mini as the old SE started becoming unusable due to its age. I did switch to a Pixel 4a temporarily but that was too big for what I wanted and traded it in as soon as I could.
I agree with you 100%
I am knocking on 50 years of age, but I have the eyes of an 80 year old! I'd LOVE to be able to use a 9" tablet as my primary phone.
I have a plethora of screens available to me, including a PC as my primary computing device; but when I'm on the go I need a _larger_ screen not a smaller one.
It's hard to tell from the colors, but if you take the 8, the two SE models, the 12 & 13 minis that's closer to 15%. Those models are are about the same size.
Worth point out; per the chart on the linked article it seems like the iPhone 12 Mini sold about as well as the iPhone 13 Mini, if I'm reading the colors correctly.
I don't know. I'm one of these people who wants a smaller phone. Not tiny but definitely wanted a smaller one. I know a couple of people who feel the same, bought an iPhone mini, and when I was looking for my last phone came across reviews specifically targeting this issue.
I don't use iPhones so don't really know very much, but my instinct is that it falls into this bundling fallacy about product characteristics (there might be another term for it; I don't know). It goes something like this:
Companies X, Y, and Z all market products with unusual characteristic A. But there's all sorts of other things about it that make it undesirable or less desirable, so the consumer is faced with trade-offs. In the context of choosing between desirable characteristic A, but also undesirable characteristics B and C, they choose another product because the cost of B and C is greater than the benefit of A.
But then the companies all conclude "no one wants A" because they half-assed the product, not realizing that it wasn't A that was the problem, it was the B and C they released it with.
I see this all the time. With clothing for example, they'll make a garment out of really nice material A, but then release it with this weird design that doesn't really appeal to anyone except a stereotype. With tech I've noticed that they don't really make it available at all sometimes. So there might be product X, but you can't really find it anywhere. With a phone, hypothetically, it might be "my phone broke this morning and I need one ASAP and all the brick and mortar shops around me only carry these specific things and not the iPhone mini."
Anyway, I don't know the iPhone mini from anything, but the bundling fallacy is so prevalent in these situations I'm skeptical. I know I faced this a bit when buying my last Android phone: the next smaller down, which I preferred based on size, and which wasn't even "small", wasn't that much smaller but also had other downsides.
Sometimes I almost feel like companies sometimes intentionally sabotage experimental products just not to deal with the headache of supporting more options in their supply chain.
Also, sometimes there are things that don't sell to a huge market, but do sell, and have a very devoted following. Smaller phones might be like that. In my experience sometimes these "devoted markets" sometimes expand into larger ones later (for example, everyone realizes 3 years from now they can't fit their phones in their pockets anymore and that it doesn't matter if they have a nice big phone to move their fingers around on if they have no place to put it).
> Sometimes I almost feel like companies sometimes intentionally sabotage experimental products just not to deal with the headache of supporting more options in their supply chain.
Except companies like Samsung throw out dozens of new models per year, which all differentiate only marginally, and none of them gets a SFF while maintaining higher quality of features (i.e. no cheap phone with 720 display and such).
Sometimes they get it right, like with the Samsung A40 from 2019, only to not pursue the sales for a true successor. Heck, me and a lot of my friends and relatives bought an A40 because of its size and fantastic display.
It's not a "flagship" but it is fully featured - nothing spared - and half the size of my palm. The screen is just small enough to be too annoying to do anything really distracting on. I have gotten NOTHING but compliments on it since I started using it a month ago (on a reco I picked up here).
> The screen is just small enough to be too annoying to do anything really distracting on
I'm a happy user of Jelly 2 for a half year now and I bought it for this single reason. It's fully featured so you can do anything, but the screen is so small that you do it only when there's a real need, so I'm not wasting time staring at the phone for no real reason.
- Battery lasts for 3 days with my usage (browsing when not at my desk, whatsapp, a handful of calls, android auto)
- Rugged / waterproof (IP68)
- Fits nicely in your hand
- 48 MP camera - not as good as Pixels, but good
- Good dual SIM setup
Cons:
- Thick; probably mostly due to the battery. Doesn't bother me, but if you wear skinny jeans and carry your phone in your front pocket it'll be noticeable
- Just got Android 11
- The built in walkie talkie is something of a gimmick since it chews up battery in standby/monitor mode. I thought it would be a useful backup since we live in the sticks w/o reliable phone signal. Get the Atom L instead
I had the Atom until AT&T said it wasn't compatible with their 5G forced switch over. Now I have the cheapest android they offer until I can find something else.
I had an original Jelly but battery life was miserable.
Don't know if you checked recently but Verizon was always way more expensive here as well but about a year or so ago we noticed they had started offering must more competitive pricing for families/individuals.
I think I might actually get this. How well does this work with Google Fi?
So years and years ago, when my main phone was a Nokia N900, I would occasionally walk into phone stores and see what was out there out of sheer curiosity. One day I saw an HTC Wildfire S, and I fell in love with the form factor right away. Unfortunately, I never bought it because I had my N900 and it was just too damn useful to justify giving it up for a cheap Android phone, and to this day I regret not buying one. It was so small and so cute and I wanted it, and now even if I do buy a used one on eBay it'll just be a glorified brick because it doesn't have LTE and no apps will run on its ancient version of Android. This is the closest thing I've ever seen to the HTC Wildfire S since... I think I actually will buy it, at least as a backup device.
One concern with a very small phone is that it necessarily has a very small battery. If you can charge frequently, or you only use the phone for an occasional text message it may be OK for you, but if you're checking it every few minutes and active on social media you'll likely not be happy with it.
I'm still using one, and the battery still lasts 2+ days between charges. All these people saying we can't have a compact phone with decent battery life, a headphone jack and an SD card slot are either uninformed or weirdly disingenuous.
That's good to know. My impression was based on other comments I had read (in particular about the Unihertz Jelly) and it seeming to make sense intuitively.
With regular use the battery lasts about as long as the iPhone 13 Pro, that is to say, slightly less than a full day. But the point of this phone is that ideally you are using it less.
Do you have any issues with apps and layouts misbehaving because of the small screen? Being annoying to type on is a feature, but is it basically impossible?
Sometimes websites with big popups fuck with you, but then again we ought to be avoiding those websites anyway. I haven't noticed any issues with apps.
Typing is much easier than you would think. With swipe typing it's almost at par.
I have one too, and I was suprised by how "not bad" it is for this. I can reach each key with my thumb, so I get muscle memory for each letter. The only issue I have is hitting W instead of E, as E is super common and it's far from the lower right corner.
I also use bitwarden for passwords, so the main thing I type without swype is the passphrase for bitwarden, and proper names that autocorrect will then proceed to change to the wrong thing afterwards anyways (just like a big android phone).
> Recently, AT&T released a whitelist of smartphone brands that will continue to work on their network after February 2022. Unfortunately, Unihertz products are not among them.
I hope someone sues AT&T for its discriminative policy.
I also have a Jelly 2, I really like it and I used it as my main phone for a month.
The reason I switched back to my Samsung Galaxy is because I changed job and will need to use it for work, and frankly the Jelly is just too small to be efficient.
This looks great. I left my Pixel 2 for a Nokia flip phone running KaiOS for half of 2021, but the OS was underwhelming, with broken WebDav syncing that required me to manually import contacts and forgo my calendar.
I then upgraded to an iPhone SE, but miss Android apps like Termux, PDANet, and MiXplorer. iOS lacks compelling alternatives: A-Shell, iOS-Socks-Proxy (running in A-Shell), and Apple Files + Readdle's Documents are decent, but don't measure up to the aforementioned Android apps.
All that makes the Jelly 2 an attractive choice. It ticks the essential smartphone boxes but discourages excessive use (doom scrolling, Instagram, TikTok, Hacker News, etc).
Thanks for posting that. At first glance, it looks like one of those $20 burner phones from 7-Eleven, but looking more closely, it seems much better than that.
Love the idea of the IR remote. I miss that from my PalmPilot.
How long does the battery last? Does the phone feel thick in your pocket? (From the photos, it looks like the device is about the same width and height as a 2020 iPhone SE but significantly thicker.)
I love my Jelly 2. The only thing that it skimped on was the camera. The primary camera is worse than my Moto G5 was. It's adequate for my primary usage of "taking pictures of things I need to remember (serial numbers, receipts &c)" but nearly useless as a general purpose photography tool.
<3 this is awesome! It even has NFC! So you can use Google Pay with it? WiFi calling? Looks like the perfect Google Fi and international travel phone too with all the bands it supports.
Is it waterproof? A small phone like this would be ideal for working out or hiking. But between sweat and rain, I'd want it to be waterproof for those scenarios.
Thanks. You're probably right. After my comment, I found the rest of their lineup, and it looks like the one that would suit my needs is the Atom: https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom
The Galaxy S10e is my current phone, and I'm not sure what I will do when it stops receiving security updates. It's basically perfect. It still has an SD card slot. It still has a headphone jack. It has wireless charging. It's reasonably sized. And it had flagship-for-the-time specs (albeit slightly less than the mainline S10 or S10+). Samsung doesn't make anything comparable to this anymore.
The only drawback is that the battery life has gotten worse since I originally bought it. But if I could easily swap that out, I would keep it for another five years.
EDIT: Oh, and the fingerprint scanner on the power button seems to work way more reliably, IMO, than the embedded fingerprint scanners under the touchscreens.
Using the same phone. The glass on the back is a bit broken after I dropped it for like the 100th time, and the battery life is somewhat mediocre, but otherwise it is the best thing I have ever used.
The S22 (standard version) has slightly bigger screen but is quite similar in size, so that is probably what I will use next.
I did exactly what you're describing. I like the S22 but it is a little bigger than my ideal size. My only minor nitpick is with the fingerprint reader being under the screen instead of embedded in the power button (which I loved about the s10e since holding it naturally would unlock the screen). Samsung should just make something like an S22e or 23e.
Using a refurbished Galaxy S7. It works just fine, is small enough and has a physical home button which I love.
We don't need new phones.
Please stop buying new phones, buy refurbished ones and prioritize easy to repair friendly hardware.
The issue with refurbished ones is guaranteeing quality.
If you buy from Amazon Renewed, for example, you have no idea exactly what you'll get. You could get a pristine unit without a scratch on it with a battery that has barely 10 cycles, or you could get a well worn (with plenty of micro scratches and minor nicks) with a battery that's been cycled 500+ times. It's kind of a crap-shoot when it comes to buying refurbished.
As someone who takes pride in keeping my phones absolutely perfect and even micro-scratch free, it's too much of a risk.
I bought mine on backmarket, they act as a middleman. You buy from a repair with a minimum six months guarantee or beyond. If it stops working, you can send it to repair. Batteries are guaranted to be at least 70% original capacity or have been replaced. There are different grades from scratched to pristine. Not sure they operate in your country though.
Getting a former flagship phone for 150 euros with a CPU just as good or equivalent to a new phone of the same price seems worth it to me. Plus it's nice not to have to worry about that expensive thing in your pocket.
If you have a bit of patience, install LineageOS. Samsung phones have a big following in this domain - as of today (May/2022), even the Galaxy S3 (Neo) is supported (!).
I'm not saying it's trivial (it's not hard, but has a large enough amount of small actions to execute), but it's definitely worth doubling (or more) the phone duration.
The FamousProducer™ of my phone supported it for 3 years. This is terrible. LineageOS allows me to use it now - over 3 years after the end of support. Screw FamousProducer™.
IIRC, LineageOS support for US Samsung devices with Snapdragon CPUs has always been very limited. Rooting them is difficult, if not impossible, and I seem to remember that doing so blows some kind of fuse in the device itself which then irreparably caps the battery on the device to like 80%.
Given that the S10e's battery life is already waning, I'm not sure I want to do that. But yes! If there were a safe way to do so, I would gladly run LOS on the phone for ten years.
Why be so coy about this? Naming and shaming should serve as a warning to those who might buy one expecting long term support, or as a spur to action towards LineageOS for those who many have been or are about to be blindsided by the support window expiring.
You're correct. The reason is not to attribute industry common practices to a specific company, but it makes sense also to expose it :) The producer is Google. I think (not sure) that they support their phones for 3 years.
The previous security update window guarantee for Pixels from Google was 3 years. With the 6 series (I believe they confirmed this includes the 6a) they extended that to 5 years.
My real problem isn't the previous 3 year window but that it counts from the first day they sell it, not the last. I bought my current phone, a Pixel 3a, late in its cycle for cheaper, early in 2020. It's now basically at the end of its updates because the guarantee counts 3 years starting from the release date in mid-2019, not from when I bought it.
5 years is obviously preferable but I'd like them to have also shifted it to be based on when they stop selling them new.
I'll see your Galaxy S10e and raise you a Galaxy S7. Just the right size for me and still going strong, in spite of the fact it was second hand already, when I bought it off eBay about 4 or 5 years ago.
I really don't know why people think they need a new phone every year. I've had 2 in the past decade. Both bought cheaply second hand [previous one am HTC One M8] and I got years of use out of each. In fact the One M8 is still working fine, apart from the degraded battery life.
Yeah, I'm still using an S7, similarly purchased second hand. Hardware is great. Have recently installed LightROM on it to get a more up to date Android, and it works really well. I tried the latest LineageOS for a brief spell, and it performed beautifully except that voice calls had the robot-voice issue that plagues Samsung phones (thanks proprietary drivers!)
I've had a very similar experience with my Galaxy S10. I got the battery swapped a few months ago for a very reasonable ₹2000 ($~30) at a Samsung service centre. Now my battery life is back to what it used to be. I'm confident I'll keep using this for at least two more years.
There's absolutely no replacement for this phone right now. Flagship specs, amazing camera, decent battery, SD card, headphone jack, 1440p screen. There's nothing like it.
PS: the in screen fingerprint sensor was quite horrible initially, but updates over the years have made it quite similar to a regular sensor.
A problem is that even within the niche of small phones, not everybody has the same wishes.
Compared to your ideal specifications, my wishes are: support for microSD card storage; battery that easily and reliably lasts a full day with moderate phone usage; fingerprint sensor, not necessarily on the power button; camera decent, not necessarily great (I don't care that much about low light performance, for example).
I'm tempted to sign up even with the specifications as you list them though. Missing microSD card support could be the major dealbreaker. Or alternatively some other user-friendly reliable method of getting lots of files from my PC to the phone's storage, but so far I haven't found any. Early Android versions supporter USB mass storage and that worked pretty well, but the transfer method implemented on newer versions is very slow and never works reliably for me.
> Missing microSD card support could be the major dealbreaker
And for the other guy a 3.5mm jack and for a third a physical off switch and look at that we have too many dealbreaker features for the form factor.
Power users tend to have more dealbreakers than the average consumer. Anecdotally, it seems power users prefer smaller phones. This might be what kills the small phone factor.
I believe the bit about power users is the HN effect at work, the main customers for small phones are people with small hands and/or pockets, who are disproportionally women.
Women are also overrepresented in the Really Big Phone market, and wield them two-handed.
They also trend heavily iPhone in the US market, but that leaves plenty of alpha for the manufacturer who serves the actual market for small-form-factor Android phones.
I agree with this. Power users are a tiny market compared to “people who can’t reasonably fit a modern phone in their pocket.”
But if you have to keep your phone in a purse anyways, why not just get a big one?
So mostly the people in that market who still care are the ones who can’t or don’t want to carry a purse, which is also a smaller market. (I’m in this market though, so i am sad)
Again, i think the phenomenon here is similar: if you can’t even get a phone you can operate one handed properly, you may as well get a bigger screen anyways.
I’m not saying that this is people’s preferred choice, I’m saying it’s a logical decision given the choices available that seems counterintuitive from first principles (and assuming a market with real choices).
And it's been a long time since any available phone could be operated one handed by most users. An iPhone Mini isn't really one-handable either.
I am the small-phone-lover this article is addressing, and I did sign up to their list - I have an Xperia XZ1 Compact and no plans to upgrade because there's nothing to upgrade it to - but my biggest complaint about the Compact is that it's too big already. I'm a not-quite-six-foot man and I can't reach to buttons in the corners one handed. So why bother? It seems that my preference is not entirely rational after all.
This. I would be willing to bet 99.9% of the human population do not have fingers long enough to operate the iphone 13 mini completely onehanded, i.e. reach all 4 corners of the screen without letting the phone slip.
The actual market for a truly one handle-able phone is enormous. It's just not possible to fit modern phone functions into a package that small though.
Who will pay flagship prices for a phone with 3 hours of battery life?
I don't, to be clear--I'm on your side here. My iPhone 11 is way too big, I just needed a new phone during that spot where the SE was long in the tooth. But people genuinely seem to like dinner plates as phones.
Yeah, I really wanted to ditch owning a phone at all when my last one broke but I realised that too many services require having some sort of authenticator or phone for two factor authentication. Banks literally require having a mobile phone as they will require you to authenticate transactions through their app. So I'm still chained to the damn thing.
I definitely want a smaller phone but I don't know that I'd call myself a power user given that I use my phone less now than I have in the past 5 years - but it has been a total replacement for things like photography.
> I bet many average consumers would want a small phone for work, travel, etc.
They neither say they do nor buy those which are available.
Maybe they'd like a smaller phone for a limited set of situations (though there’s no evidence of that) but they’re not going to buy two phones, so that’s not relevant.
It's like asking a single-issue voter their preference on other subjects.
You shouldn't be downvoted. It's exactly the problem. My main factors are: Replaceable battery, headphone jack, LineageOS (or other custom rom) support. If those are matched the smaller the better - I loved my HP Veer, which I admit did not meet these requirements - but without them size is not the main factor.
Those additional requirements further splinter the market.
But what's the point in buying a small phone if it does not meet these standards, which are all about longevity? Then it will just be unusable in ~2 years. Which would make it no better than the otherwise perfect small phone I already have at home, the Veer.
> Early Android versions supporter USB mass storage and that worked pretty well, but the transfer method implemented on newer versions is very slow and never works reliably for me.
Sounds like you haven't been using ADB. Normally, like you've seen, getting files on or off a modern Android handset is a terrible experience. Considering I only do bulk transfers from my own PC, I just apt install adb, then adb push $files $destination. Highly recommend - it's one of the few ways Android is still dramatically better for techy users.
- runs Android (I'm on Android 10, but might upgrade)
- measures about 14cm diagonally and 8-9mm thick
- uses around 10-15% charge per day of light use (without Google services)
- has a standard headphone jack
- has stereo speakers
- has decent front and back cameras, with no bump
- has a microSD slot
- has a USB type C port
- has a fingerprint sensor (I disabled mine)
- is water-tight and dust-tight (IP68)
- supports VoLTE
- supports WiFi calling
My previous phone was similar, and a bit slimmer. The one before that didn't get such good battery life, but its physical keyboard, swappable battery, and even smaller size made up for having to charge more often.
Obviously, these devices are not common, but they are made from time to time. I'm looking at hardware right now that proves there is no technical barrier. I don't see any reason to dissuade people from asking for a new model.
It’s also a phone that was first announced in 2016, by a company that has lost money for the past 5 years and is basically retreating from the global market.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of its mobile phone strategy.
And it last a long time not using any services that make Android what it is to most users (ie using Google service) is not a mass market selling point.
Being a few years old does not make my example less valid. (Arguably the opposite, given that it still works well today.) The point is that it meets GP's needs.
Sony's poor marketing strategy was not caused by one phone model, nor is it a requirement for small phones in general.
You could easily adjust the numbers I quoted to estimate battery life with Google services running. Assume half, or a third, if you like. It would still meet GP's needs.
A phone that is a few years old doesn’t have the energy/battery requirements that new phones have because of a more memory hungry operating system that requires a beefier cheapest, more memory hungry cellular chipsets (5G), Google Services, etc.
And if a company can’t sell a phone profitable, it’s not a viable product.
And he admits that he hardly ever uses it.
And that phone will probably not work at all soon in the US if it doesn’t support VoLTE.
> Early Android versions supporter USB mass storage and that worked pretty well, but the transfer method implemented on newer versions is very slow and never works reliably for me.
Have you tried both connecting your phone to your computer via USB and connecting your phone to a USB stick?
I use Total Commander to transfer files. It has plugins for many different kinds of transfer, but I mainly use SMB for computers on my lan and sometimes sftp for others.
You can filter by specs to see how close you can get to your dream phone. There are quite a few available on the market that match the 5.5" screen size of the iPhone 13 Mini. Even by the big manufacturers like Samsung and Google. Like the Pixel 3. Which was introduced 4 years ago though.
In general, phones have been becoming larger and larger over the years. So this chart has been becoming more and more sparse over time.
But recently, the voices demanding small phones seem to become louder and more frequent.
I am curious to see if it will reverse the trend.
At some point, I will probably make a graph that shows the change in average screensize over time.
I have given up: the iphone mini (which I own) is gargantuan.
There are a few glimmers of hope around the edges. Palm was interesting but too small (the primary problem was the battery, not the screen size). Unihertz is doing some interesting stuff in the small phone arena, but their stuff is either too small and thick (the jelly) or too big (titan). Their styling is also a bit funky in a 90's tech vibe sort of way that I'm not a huge fan of.
What I want is an iphone 4-sized phone that I can keep in my pocket w/o noticing and that provides the basics of smart phones. Even better if it could be an e-ink screen so I don't have to charge it very often.
I pulled a 5 out of my draw and was pleasantly surprised at the size and feel, but then I actually went to use it and it was quite bad. I wasn’t able to comfortably two hand the phone to type which meant my typing speed was massively reduced.
Personally I mostly use my phone two handed so even the pro max is usable even though I can’t reach all areas with one hand.
I like the idea of the litephone except it's the opposite of what I use a phone for. I don't care much about phone calls, they're mostly useless except that my doorbell is hooked up to my phone (which is of course set to silent lol) and sometimes I need to talk to banks or recruiters. I want maps, chat apps, email, lyft, a browser, etc. but also to disable 99% of notifications 99% of the time.
Right now I still use my Palm Phone (PVG100) and I'm bummed that it looks like they won't release another one. Gonna use it until it's impossible for it to function in the modern world.
i have a litephone for my kids and it's too minimalistic, I'd still like maps, etc
if we could combine the styling of the palm, but a bit bigger and with much better battery w/ and e-ink display and decent battery life, I'd be in heaven
The litephone is too basic and the HiSense A5 etc do not work on US networks.
I looked at building a 5.2" e-ink phone for the US market and did some fun mock-ups, but it would be a huge undertaking with my limited hardware background. Smaller phones just have fundamental limits due to battery size that are difficult to work around, and Android has basically no e-ink support as it's such a niche type of display for a phone.
I wanted this and it didn't exist, so now I use an iPhone 13 mini. I'll likely replace the battery on this a few times since rumor has it the mini model won't be continued. It's too bad that Apple is running entirely on the sales numbers of the mini itself for that decision, as since getting an iPhone 13 mini I've bought 3 of the newest model of macbook pro for members of my family, started using Apple TV+ and Apple Music, and bought myself some Airpods pro. Apple brought me into their ecosystem with this device so from my perspective it seems like it could be worthwhile for them to continue making it.
I think we will see the small phone format returning down the road under the SE brand instead. So a year or two from now a new SE that looks like today's 13 mini.
While the rumors themselves are usually pretty accurate, the interpretations and conversations around them remain pretty wild and emotional. Low sales numbers probably proved that the mini isn't the format that needs a refresh every single year and the 13 mini was unique because the 12 mini had a few weak points that needed addressing.
I think Apple has lately really had it's sh*t together when it comes to strategy and timing lately. They knew years ahead of time that the interest in the small format (in which you can reach across the entire screen with your thumb) would return as soon as everyone got used to and bored with big screens.
I also got a 13 Mini. It's a nice phone, but it feels very dense, especially with the magsafe case. I'm not sold on the experience coming from Android, but it seems like it's a case of learning workarounds.
In hindsight, I realised that I was coming from an Android phone a few generations back (Pixel 2) which I considered to be a reasonable size. Pixels have gotten about 10 mm longer over time. However now we have wall to wall screens, it's quite a difference. The iPhone Pro is the same form factor as a Pixel 2, for example, but is all screen. 6" seems doable for Android, but that's a lower bound.
I think what we all want is a Pixel 2 without the bezel. There are lots of phones with smaller OLED displays, but none without the bezel.
I've been looking at new phones since my Xperia Compact (XZ1) started having some issues, and iPhone seems to be the only choice. I just wish it had usb-c. By the way, did you consider to go with 12 instead of 13?
I'd give the iPhone 13 Mini a weak-recommend for small phone lovers coming from Android. It is truly the only option for small phones. (Well, small-ish. I actually find it a bit larger than I'd like, but it's acceptable.) But, iOS is a really significant downgrade from Android. It's usable, I've lived with mine for months, but I'm really hoping I can switch back to Android in the future. I've even considered just reselling the iPhone at a loss so I can switch back sooner, but it's hard because there are also no good Android options, so I haven't... yet.
I had the 12 mini and then paid a few bucks to upgrade to the 13 mini during a promotion at a local shop. The 13 mini battery life is better which I really appreciate since my phone is my GPS device when I'm in the backcountry without a charger.
I wonder how much of the limited sales of the iPhone mini could be attributed to the branding? What if Apple were to drop the mini and make this the base iPhone, with the other models being Plus, Pro, Max?
Margins may be poorer with Mini, so it likely won’t happen, but I feel mini sales could be much higher if they wanted them to be.
But they don't necessarily have to be. We've never had an option where, for the same price, you could choose screen sizes. There's a sizable portion of people for whom larger phones are simply difficult to use. Would I have paid an extra $50 for my iPhone 12 mini? Yep, because I was buying based on the size, not the price.
This is so weird compared to 20 years ago, where the smaller the phone was, the more expensive it was. The big bulky phones were a sign that you couldn't afford the smaller one. A few friends joke that I couldn't afford a 'real' phone when I pull out my 12 mini, which... is nuts because I bought it outright, and a couple of them worry about 'when can I upgrade? oh, let me check how many more payments I have on this current model'.
That's not a totally fair comparison, because before smartphones there was no inherent advantage to a phone being larger. You got exactly the same features either way, so miniature was premium. Now the big screen is the premium feature.
2. You don’t want to carry a big iPhone and you have a Mac/iPad nearby anyway for anything complicated so a big phone is unnecessary.
The second case should motivate wanting eg their ‘pro’ cameras in the small phone but the first case motivates making it cheap and low-margin. You can also imagine a world where apple markets a mini phone as also being an optional companion to a bigger phone, but they already have the watch for that.
But it’s increasingly clear that a small premium phone is not on the roadmap. So I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. My goal with https://smallandroidphone.com is to rally other fans of small phones together and put pressure on Google/Samsung/Anyone to consider making a small phone.
I have a very specific set of skills and industry connections that I have acquired over a long career in the hardware business (my first startup was Pebble). I will put them to use in our shared quest to get the perfect small Android phone. If no one else builds one, and enough people sign up...maybe I will be forced to make it myself.
If you want a small premium Android phone, this may be your last chance (ever?) to help bring back the phone category that we love.