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
> 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.

>>oceanp+Pz
I’ve owned smart phones since the treo.

I’ve owned blackberry phones, windows mobile, even a palm pre.

I’ve had nearly every iPhone since launch.

I’m on an iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Nothing makes me yearn for a smaller screen.

I held an iPhone 3G in my hand last week after finding it in a drawer and was amazed at how it felt too small to be really useful these days.

My gal has a 13 pro max.

My folks have larger phones.

My siblings have larger phones.

My friends, colleagues, business partners, clients, all have larger phones.

The biggest complaint I hear is battery life.

I hope small screen fans find what they want but I do not believe it’s a big market.

>>johneb+aV1
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.