zlacker

>>asimop+(OP)
My cynical take is that small phones don't exist because they are not the product. Similar to vape pens the product is the addictive substance the device loads. In this case its apps and ads. A smaller screen probably negatively impacts KPIs on many levels, at Google/Apple/Meta/X and on down through the ecosystem.

I understand that Apple did not make enough money to make it worth their while to continue the iphone mini line. However, it does seem like there is a profitable business for someone there given how beloved it was/is.

I only traded out my iphone 12 mini just recently for an iphone 16 pro (likely the last apple product I will ever buy but thats another story) and aside from the camera it is basically the same. Just heavier, awkward to hold and slightly worse designed.

No major player wants a smaller screen because it has downstream impacts on the pipeline of addictive material and ad pixels they can stuff into ocular nerves.

>>pclowe+Cf
What was so odd was how Apple fumbled the iPhone mini launch by launching the iPhone SE first. At that point there hadn't been a small phone for a few years, There was pent up demand. The SE came out and it was a big success, lots of people wanted ti because it was a small phone.

Then few months later they launched the mini expecting it to sell even more or something. Somehow they missed that everyone that wanted a small phone had just bought the SE, and it just wasn't long enough for them to be worth upgrading to the much better mini.

Had they waited for a year to pass the mini might have done much better because those who wanted a more powerful phone could find an excuse for an upgrade after a year, less then 6 months, not so much.

>>Garnet+wF
I don't know. I think the SE was there there to generate services income (Apps, Apple Music, etc.) from people who wouldn't buy an iPhone otherwise. The design was intentionally very stale to avoid cannibalization of their flagships. I don't think a lot of people who bought flagship iPhones before would go to an SE. Imagine going from an iPhone X or XS to an SE, it's a big downgrade. People were not buying the SE because of the size, but because it was cheap (the iPhone 16e that is the cheaper model now, has the same size as the 16).

My wife, I, and several people I know had iPhone 12 or 13 Mini. Their battery life was pretty terrible and word soon got out it was. I think this was in the end what killed it for people who are normally buying Apple flagships and were considering a Mini. It was very hard to get through the day with a Mini.

Besides the abysmal battery life, I think the market for small phones is maybe simply not there. Samsung keeps around one smaller model (base S-series) and arguably the Z Flip is a smaller model (but persistent hardware issues). If there was a large demand for flagship-class small phones, I am sure some Android manufacturers would make them.

>>microt+fW
They could have made the SE large but slow (instead of small and slow) and avoided all cannibalization future and present.

My hypothesis about the supposed non-existence of the small phone buyer is that they very much do exist (personally, haven't bought anything other than whatever was the smallest Xperia at the time in more than a decade), but that this group has little overlap with the group willing to buy for list price on release day. But the perception of success of a given phone is very much dominated by the latter, the long tail of buyers isn't really seen. Even if the release day premium over mid-lifecycle street price (in countries where price fixing is not allowed) goes to the retailer and is of very little interest to the manufacturer.

Manufacturers should just move compacts to a three year cycle and forget everything about hyper-optimizing desirability for the kind of buyer who spends too much time reading questionable review sites.