zlacker

>>erohea+(OP)
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...

>>davee5+5r
Talking about notch/hole-punch displays. As somebody who never ever uses front-facing camera, can I have a phone/display without such defects, please?

>>nouser+Vy
Yeah, no kidding. How much of the small phone demo overlaps with the selfie demo? I could go without a front camera.

>>brnaft+jB
"selfie"? Video-calls are especially normalized now, since the pandemic. My family and friends use video-calls more often than voice-only calls now.

>>nfoz+RH
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.