zlacker

>>asimop+(OP)
The hard reality is that there is no PAYING market for such a device, because when it comes to the point-of-sale, most people still choose the normal-size device with better screen/battery/camera.

This is equivalent to something I called the "QWERTY paradox" more than a decade ago:

Back when the Smartphone market exploded, people disliked typing on a touchscreen and repeatedly stated that they want a device with a physical keyboard.

There was plenty of evidence, surveys, market studies, trend predictions, devices for these "Messaging-centric" use-cases were always part of this market-demand roster.

But whenever someone answered the call and built a Smartphone with QWERTY keyboard, the product failed commercially, simply because also to people claiming they want such a phone, at the point of sale they were less attractive than their slimmer, lighter, all-screen counterparts.

Every major vendor went through this cycle of learning that lesson, usually with an iteration like "it needs to be a premium high-spec device" --> (didn't sell) --> "ah, it should be mass-market" --> (also didn't sell).

You can find this journey for every vendor. Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Sony.

The same lessons were already learnt for small-screen devices: There was a "Mini" series of Samsung Galaxy, LG G-series, HTC One, Sony Xperia. It didn't sell, the numbers showed that it didn't attract additional customers, at best it only fragmented the existing customer-base.

Source: I work in that industry for a long time now

>>rickde+qp1
Who decides what a normal-sized device is?

>>robert+FX1
Screen manufacturers, based on orders from the big buyers. They set up their machines to build panels and cut them to size, minimizing wasted area. If you want one of the sizes built in volume, great; if not, it's very difficult.

>>toast0+bf2
There's a nice anecdote from ~2019:

Within one year, the screen size of nearly all mass-market smartphones took a huge bump from 5.x" to 6.5", because of two ODMs (device manufacturers who are contracted by big brands to design and produce smartphones). Those two ODMs won contracts to produce mass-market devices for the brands Lenovo/Motorola, Huawei and Xiaomi based on a 6.5" 720p LCD.

The total volume forecast was so big, that suddenly 6.5" displays were cheaper than any other 720p smartphone panel. Other Smartphone brands adjusted mid-development because the larger panel also made the PCBs and batteries cheaper. In that year, mass-market devices with 1080p displays were often smaller (which was contradictory for a vendor-portfolio until then) because there was no such economics of scale on higher-resolution panels.

So within a single year, displays got a full inch larger, not because the consumer demanded it but because of supply-chain dynamics.