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.
There's also the Cyrcle Phone (https://www.cyrclephone.com/) which doesn't seem to be for sale anymore after its Kickstarter and Indie Go Go campaigns.
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.
So, by all accounts, the iPhone mini has been an extremely slow seller.
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula...
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.
It made a breakthrough in a market where you either had an expensive Samsung or you dealt with cheap phones with very bad specs. This was ages ago, fortunately today there are more phones that are cheap but with acceptable specs.
It's a 2.5 inch 3G Android phone. http://www.cwell-hk.com/products/SOYES_XS11.aspx
Lots of small Android phones are in the recommended section on cwell-hk in the $40 range.
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.
* https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/21/cirp-iphone-13-best-selling-l...
The S22 (standard version) has slightly bigger screen but is quite similar in size, so that is probably what I will use next.
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.
It's wonderful to have a small phone.
But to be fair I bought it to spend less time on my phone, and the annoyances that it does have make the choice easy lol
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.
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).
Yeah, not going to happen - people in general are NOT going to pay more for a smaller phone. Even the iPhone mini is cheaper than the full size models.
I finally have a small phone again, and I’m liking ios.
People with smaller hands want to be able to operate the phone fully with one hand.
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™.
Dreading the day I'll have to start searching for a replacement :(
I don't even need premium, i just want anything at all. I really do hate my current phone, i can't even type on it properly with one hand, it's too big. I may begrudgingly end up replacing it with an iphone, the only reason I haven't yet is that it's locked down and I would miss f-droid, and the linux compatibility sucks. but of course android has its own problems (namely google trying to squeeze as much data as possible out of you, and making it as hard as they can to turn off the various settings related to that buried in different setting sub-menus)
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?
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.
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.
How does it compare to the palm phone PVG100, usually available for 1/3 of the price? (new but in OEM box)
It seems much thicker.
Also, which network are you using?
https://www.unihertz.com/blogs/news/about-at-t-usage-in-the-...
> 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.
5% of 200,000,000 is 10,000,000.
5% can be a huge number, or a tiny number, depending on what it's 5% of.
I switched from Android to Apple specifically for the iPhone mini, and if they killed it, I would switch to the smallest phone on the market.
(Unfortunately I am personally looking for something in between this and today's "phablets".)
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.
- 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.
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.
Cons: My co-workers make fun of me :)
Edit: formatting
BTW the best form factor phone I had was the Nexus 4, at 4.7". I would very much like that back, but without that slippery glass back, repairable, held together with screws, with replaceable battery, shipped with LineageOS or /e/. Yep, I'll keep dreaming.
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.
Well, it's up against the iPhone SE, which has the same size, same weight and the same processor. [1]
[1] https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone13m...
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?
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.
Much of this is able to be done with wifi, but not via the cellular networks (without additional costs).
In other words, there is no ideal one-size-fits-all option, and I'd be willing to pay for additional hardware to give me choice of what to carry at any given time, but I do not want to pay Verizon just for the privilege of having a 2nd SIM provisioned (and I do not want to swap SIMs).
Sad to say but ruthless supply chain and product range efficiency is one of the pillars of Apple's return.
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 have accepted that I am a market of one.
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.
Then again, that was when in high school. Maybe my fingers grew bigger.
5.8" 1080x2280 AMOLED display, with a tiny hole punch front camera; Snapdragon 855, 6/8gm RAM, 128/256gb of storage (with support for microsd card); two rear cameras (wide and ultrawide) with great image quality(imho); ip68; gorilla glass 5; 3.5mm jack; usb type c; wireless charging + reverse wireless charging; fingerprint on power button (side mounted); ~4hours SOT (3100mAh); it comes with samsung's bloated os but you can put custom rom (i checked support for /e/ os and its supported, but i belive there are other options); ~400 euros
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).
Good luck with your switch.
Samsung's UI has come a long way, now I actually prefer OneUI over stock Android.
The battery is the main issue, about 2h of use or 1 day if in power saving mode with every optimization applied.
It's still good enough as a travel phone, turned on only when I need to call.
These are top of the line phones, but they're very solid. Unihertz is making some good devices.
Was a hard decision, because my Android was rooted with LineageOS, was able to block ads and all kinds of nice things.
But ultimately, it just pissed me off too much to carry around a bulky phone (Fairphone 3).
Fairly happy with the 12 mini, just don't like the Apple ecosystem that much.
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.
How much compute does the average person even need from their phone these days? Aren't most people just browsing the internet and checking emails?
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 brand that seems to be well supported (although not as extensively, timewise, as Samsung) is Google. LineageOS still supports the Pixel 1.
Sure the battery sucks and the phone locks up from too many things happening sometimes, but those are perfectly fine trade offs for a phone that fits into my life and isn’t my life.
When I bought my 13 mini I also bought the new iPad mini to have a larger device for content consumption and the combo is lovely
Hm, I’d suspect most of the customers are more attached to the Apple iPhone than the form. I’m one, but, I could be wrong!
0: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/ford-exec-says-this-is-why-it-s...
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."
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.
Then why is Apple dropping it ?
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).
I know that's a bit more extreme than the <6" mentioned in the article, but I think it still holds that when making a flagship packed with good cameras, battery life, and CPU, it's much easier to make a sexy looking large phone than a small phone.
Feedback on the website:
On the graphic at the bottom where you overlay different models of phone:
1. I think the red/green/blue borders would benefit from more contrast. It's hard for my eyes to distinguish.
2. I think you should add a deck of cards to the graphic. It would provide a frame of reference for scale.
... P.S. I just noticed the "Extrapolating from past models, the Pixel 10 will be roughly the size of California" below the graphic. If the purpose of the graphic was purely to accompany that joke, then I guess ignore my suggestions.
Although, a deck of cards may contribute to the joke. Hmmm
same way the universe is perfectly made for us because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here, ya'know ?
- Sent from my iPhone 13 mini
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-12-mini,...
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 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.
I think Android phones just don't have the power efficiency to be small anymore. End of an era.
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.
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.
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.
My wife's solution to iPhones being too big was to upgrade all of her handbags and to buy flouncy dresses with pockets.
Wanna trade families? Please?
Why can't we just get an updated version of that?
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.
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.
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.
Also curious where you're from that you never heard of this.
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.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/20/apple-iph....
When the iPhone 12 lineup was announced, the main talking point about the mini among reviewers and whatnot was how poor battery life will be. To be honest, once I disabled the 5G (I'm not anti-5G, I just don't need it most of the time), battery life is fine. In fact, it's pretty phenomenal for the specs if you've had any lengthy history with smartphones (my first LTE phone either needed multiple charges per day, or I carried spare batteries).
It's pretty easy to build an echo chamber that agrees smaller phones are preferred and make it appear as though there's a decent amount of us, but the simple fact is, people like us are in the minority, and it shows in the iPhone sales. That's why there's not going to be an iPhone 14 mini, and why the mini design is probably going to be the next SE. And if you even look at the SE sales numbers, they're still not great against other iPhone models.
On top of that, this audience, specifically, are probably not going to be upgrading every generation, so there's going to be gaps where we don't feed the machine/sales numbers to make it look better. I will not buy an iPhone 13 mini. I will not buy an iPhone 14. I probably will not even buy the next SE even if it's an iPhone 13 mini with a newer SoC. So long as my 12 mini keeps going, it'll continue to serve me. So I fail to contribute to the sales numbers to make it look better.
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
Over time the MotoG phones have been getting larger - to the extent that now the one I have doesn't fit in my sporran, if I go out wearing a kilt.
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).
Paraphrasing Contact: First rule in cell phone building: why build small when you can build twice as big at twice the price?
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.
So make it 3mm thicker?
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.
Which is surprisingly usable, but there are some apps that don't work.
I also wouldn't actually log into anything unless you're ok being pwned. No security patches, plus sketchy cheap as dirt chips running it.
You can also not type on it. Maybe a sentence, but it'll take you 3x as long if not more trying to correct typos. If you do any text based communication, you're going to have a bad time.
Overall, not worth it.
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.
Love the idea of the IR remote. I miss that from my PalmPilot.
The only way I could find to have a smaller screen was to switch over to iOS. Currently I have an iPhone SE (iPhone 8) at 4.7" which is lovely, but I would have preferred to stay with Android as it's the only Apple device I currently own.
(edit) Regarding the specifications:
- don't care for 5G, 4G has better range and better power efficiency
- don't care for a second rear camera, invest more into the first
- 4h SOT seems like a pretty low target, the Pixel 5 can probably do 8h easilyI thought I maybe made a mistake but then saw a Pixel 6 pro, it's EVEN BIGGER. I do kind of regret getting a pro, but I'm not mad enough about it to swap for a mini.
Nice to Have: - Higher refresh rate screen!
Just because we're small doesn't mean we need to have worse feature sets!
I'm glad the author mentioned weight, as I think it should be added to the list of requirements. The iPhone6 is 129 g and feels light, the iPhone13 mini is 141 g, my XZ2C is 168 g and is heavy enough I think it causes wrist pain, while the Pixel 5a is 183 g!
Never been a fan of the large phones which was why I held on to my iPhone 6S for a very long time (compared to how frequently folks upgrade) before finally upgrading to an iPhone 12 mini (when I ran out of space on the 6S).
1: https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/01/...
And, when it comes to 'pocketability' I find pockets generally trend to expand depth-wise to accommodate thicker items. I've yet to find a garment with pockets that expand length- or width-wise to accommodate larger items
Then you want the display to be small but of high resolution (and quality!), so 1080 pixels in width is necessary to have at least 320 to 350 dpi. My Samsung A40, which I bought for 220€ in 2019. has 440dpi (with 1080 pixels width), and this is marvellous because I cannot see single pixels anymore.
Third reason is the processor. There are still enough cheap ones built-in, that cause stutter and pauses.
I don't want just a small phone, I want a nice and reasonably-priced small phone. It was sold for less than 250€, so even in smaller batches it should be possible to reach a 500€ mark.
IMHO vendors try not to sell small flagship phones so you have to buy a foldable phone, which is way more expensive.
But rarely something as expensive to create as a smart phone.
I see that option more viable and effective.
TBH if I do end up replacing it with something else, it doesn't have to be stock Android or even a powerful device. I'm okay with replacing my 4a with some cheap ultra-budget shanzhai phone as long as it's small and it works with T-Mobile US's LTE network.
Also the iPhone Mini itself isn't an option—not only do I not want to be part of Apple's ecosystem, but I have sensory issues and can't handle metal phones. I need a plastic phone. And no, a case isn't an option because a case would just make the phone too wide for me to hold.
My wife just purchased an new iPhone SE2. I truly cannot use the phone the screen is too little for me.
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.
LineageOS supported https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/sake/
https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/small_android_phone...
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.
The author's motivations don't see that strong, though. I mean, if Apple improved the notification system and the file management, would this project exist? Or is it that unlikely to happen in a few years?
Anyway, I really hope the project works. I really do. And I'm willing to contribute the way I can.
I've been trying to make the switch to Android for years, but couldn't find a decent device, despite few attempts over the years.
Typing is much easier than you would think. With swipe typing it's almost at par.
One-handed mode is decent when holding the phone parallel to the ground supported by your hand, but still doesn't cut it for holding the phone up since you'll need to grip the entire phone body anyways.
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-handed mode is decent when holding the phone parallel to the ground supported by your hand, but still doesn't cut it for holding the phone up since you'll need to grip the entire phone body anyways.
Palm phone fwiw also got discontinued for lack of interest as far as I know.
1. Cheaper iPhone
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.
> This app you need wants access to all your files and photos.
It's ridiculous that it's all or nothing and you cannot have more control than that.
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)
Pros:
- 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
The Sony seems to be the best alternative though I have no idea of the software quality.
Also, stock Android can be a mixed blessing. My guess this is mostly used as synonymous to "no bloatware". But stock Android doesn't necessarily translate to a better user experience, or to software updates for a longer time.
I almost think people with small phones just underestimate how much they'd be able to adjust to a larger phone.
SE is clearly a 'budget' (at least for apple) phone. Some people really want a small phone that isn't.
The newest SE is substantially larger and worse.
I love my mini, but it’s also clear this is the last one.
I have a lot of Apple gear (I develop Apple native apps). I tend to use the Mini phone, and the Mini iPad, the most. The rest of the stuff sits around, until it's testing/screenshot time.
Going back yo the previous OS would fix that, but it was also buggy and missing proper support for the new gesture navigation. I love the phone but it also makes me hate Google so much.
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'.
I only use it for Whatsapp, bathroom break HN and a few calls a week. Everything else I do from my PC. Also, performance is great for me, I'm not planning on running games or k8s on my mobile.
EDIT: looks like you're talking about the 13 mini, I got the 12 mini, which IIRC has similar battery life complaints. Not sure if it got worse with the latest iteration.
I tried searching for a modern phone that still has all this and there's nothing. The best I could find is a current Motorola phone; most of them still have jacks and SD cards and some have reasonable resolution, but they're all large size. Some of them also support the FM radio chip if you want that.
I'm not sure about that. This could be due to the marketing/positioning i.e. Apple first switched to producing bigger phones (with more features/power) which caused people to buy these bigger phones (there were no smaller & newer phones).
After some complaints, Apple produced a smaller version of their phone but they market it as one with less features (smaller battery, smaller processor, etc).
If Apple devoted resources to producing smaller sized phones with comparable features as the Pro, the statistics might be different. To be clear, a larger phone will always have some edge but the minis should not be clearly designed as a step down version phone
That seems crazy low. I have an iPhone Mini (and would switch back to Android when I replace it if they have a mini quality phone and Apple doesn’t) and my battery lasts “all day.” I’m not sure how it works out in terms of screen on time, but it’s got to be at least 6 hours a day. Probably more.
At this point I think I'm just done with Google's Android and I think I'm ready to try one of those Chinese forks with a super-colorful iOS-like UX.
As a criminal defense attorney, I will never own a FaceID device. Ever. I owned an iPhone 7, then an iPhone 8, then an iPhone SE 2020, then another iPhone SE 2020. I may upgrade to the iPhone SE 2022.
Cost is not an issue for me. I don't buy the iPhone SE because I'm cheap. I buy the iPhone SE because it is, on balance, hands down the best phone Apple makes right now for people who value convenience, portability, and security.
I tried the iPhone Mini when I broke my first iPhone SE while hiking. I don't trust FaceID to work when I want it to (masks, glasses vs contacts, etc. tripped it up). I don't trust FaceID not to work when I don't want it to. I ended up returning it and going back to the SE.
I don't think I'm alone.
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.
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.
- 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...
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).
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 was thinking about my previous phones the other day, and I really miss some of the more innovative ones from HTC. I think the Startrek was my favorite - a Windows Mobile flip phone with a "dumb phone" keypad. The myTouch 3g might be next - Android with physical buttons and a trackball(!)
Phones have gotten faster, but they keep getting bigger, the battery life is rarely more than a day's worth of use, and the "premium" ones keep getting more expensive - while simultaneously loosing features like expandable storage and the headphone jack.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moto_G_(1st_generation)
Edit: ah found another source as well about it being on the LTE model https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Motorola-Moto-G-LTE_id8655
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?
https://www.unihertz.com/collections/smartphones/products/je...
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.
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.
I’m not disagreeing, I’m very wary of these mechanisms, just curious about your thought process.
Disable animations and it s not really slow.
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.
Cheaper, lighter, easy to carry on, … was mostly what I cared about phones until I realized that my sight is getting worst and how important to me is to have bigger fonts.
I’d almost go for a dumb phone, almost... but then I need emails, maps and WhatsApp.
I don’t need 50 filters, 3 cameras, razor-thin (yet somehow enormous) body, more Storage than my laptop, etc etc...
Unfortunately, it looks like it won't be sold in the US. Does it support US LTE bands so I can import it at least?
They have also recently improved FaceID to work with masks on, so the situation has improved since you tested the mini.
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.
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.
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.
I switched from a large Android device to an iPhone Mini because I preferred the size. Before the switch, I had used pretty much only larger phones.
So, at least for me as a data point, your assumption is wildly wrong.
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).
---
Locking up, I think it comes from moving from my old iPhone 11 Pro to the non-pro variant. I felt a little spoiled with the Pro model.
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.
That being said, I also play golf and use a Golf GPS tracker, Pokemon Go, and social media most of the day. Coming from an iPhone 11 Pro which had incredible battery life, it is a major change. BUT, the lower battery life is manageable. I have external battery packs, I prepare for these types of things. I can make it last when I need it to.
For clients under investigation who have FaceID or similar unlocking for phones or computers, we always recommend they disable it and just use a passcode until the investigation is complete.
Wasn't the 11 pro the size of the mini / SE? I don't remember whether there was an 11 mini, but it seems to me that 11 pro / SE were exactly that, and the current minis / se are the size of the 7/8/se/11 pro.
I the time I couldn't justify buying a new phone, but I remember late last year, when I figured I could start looking, I was possibly contemplating getting the 13 pro, for the camera. But when I saw how huge it was, I immediately abandoned the idea.
SyncThing, sftp from a termux shell, or primitive ftpd.
Isn’t 6” about the size of an iPhonex/XR/11 which is a huge slab of a phone?
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.
Granted this kind of breaks down at borders where they have special laws, but for inside various countries it still holds.
A headphone jack is much more useful for me personally than 5G, so I happily saved the money.
> The judge in that case drew a bright line: Under the Fifth Amendment, police could not force the suspect to communicate his passcode, but they could force him to use his fingerprint to unlock the device. The reason?
> Providing a fingerprint was “non-testimonial,” because it did not require the suspect to produce anything from his own mind. On the other hand, to give up your personal passcode is classically testimonial, since it comes from your head.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te...
The small screen discourages me from wasting too much time on it and using it only when needed.
You can set any iPhone to use a passcode every time, disable TouchID, FaceID, whatever.
Being very honest, I think the original iPhone was the right size - through the iPhone 4. I appreciate that people wanted larger screens, and larger screens accommodate larger batteries, but I think the 3.5" screen of the early iPhones made for a great size.
Oh well.
If anything, mobile phone market is exceedingly horrible because of consolidation into a single product with not much choice.
The iphone 12 mini and 13 mini are both smaller than the 2nd/3rd gen SE but larger than the 1st gen SE.
The 2nd/3rd gen SE is the same size as the iphone 8.
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.
Have you tried both connecting your phone to your computer via USB and connecting your phone to a USB stick?
> ...An Android phone (with Beeper for iMessage) might be an adequate alternative...
...and...
> ...Extrapolating from past models, the Pixel 10 will be roughly the size of California
These days I find myself leaving my phone more and more, only taking it when I probably need a camera.
Due to my aversion of taking my electronics over international borders, I went on vacation a few years ago with a flip phone (LTE still), and found that T9 was too inconvenient for even basic logistics, so got a secondary Android phone after that.
I really really want a Pro Mini :(
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.
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.
6 hours or more _per day_ sounds absolutely insane though, you must be overestimating that unless you use your phone as a GPS to commute or some similar use case that requires it on in the background.
The problem, of course, is much like brown manual diesel station wagons, it's a small but vocal niche and there may not be enough actual buyers to justify it. Apple's sales figures are large enough that it may very well 'big enough' for them, but is that true for any individual Android manufacturer?
I know that you think you are setting an attainable bar, But that is not the case. Most phones you can buy today would not deliver this. A lot of it has to do with computational photography (code Google will not license to you) and per-device tuning done at the factory (details of which Google will not give you)
However I'm refuse to pay more than 200 USD for phone. It is device that could be easily broken, lost or stolen. I also do not need super specs. I mean... It is ridiculous how basic purpose of phone (calls, messages, emails, contacts...) shifted to machine that has betters specs than laptops. Of course quite a lot o people simply switch from laptop to high end phone, but what about those who need reliable phone for basic communication and don't want to pay for features that don't actually need (I never used front camera, NFC, big screen for gaming, etc.)?
Maybe I'm old fashioned but for me: • phone = communication, calendar, notes, GPS • pictures = camera • gaming, work = desktop
https://palm.com/pages/product
Regretfully, it filled with a lot of carrier spyware (originally Verizon) that eats the battery in the background. If cleaned up, the battery life gets much better (up to two days). But, after a month or so, for me the phone for some reason factory-reset itself. Not sure, if it was an update or initiated by the carrier or a hardware glitch or something else.
Nice, clean looking, unlocked, very inexpensive hardware (<$100 refurbished), but very poor android build.
Works great, especially considering the display is not quite small enough for me in the first place.
There’s something wrong with your phone. Try resetting it maybe?
The iPhone 5 was the perfect size, and I miss that form factor. But The camera is what sells me the device.
I’ll try to see if there’s some setting killing it.
I've given up. My plan is buying a dumbphone until Pine is usable by me.
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 had an original Jelly but battery life was miserable.
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.
The main use cases for smart phones are texting, email, social media Twitter/Facebook/Whatsapp/etc., general computing (banking etc.), games, video.
All of these use cases are made better by a larger screen size.
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.
i've been in the anti-iphone group since the first iphone. frankly, android has (and more importantly android phones have) pissed me off more than apple and that's the primary reason of me being an iphone convert now.
https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-sch-w2013-jackie-ch...
And in 2018, One Plus had a $3,000 phone:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/this-3000-oneplus-6-is-the-...
Majority of the time I enjoy a full screen experience with a tiny bezel. If I need the selfie cam it silently and very quickly is there.
I think they didn't catch on as they are complicated and inhibit IP68 ratings.
But I think I'll struggle to move on from it. The notches and hole punch cameras just look like an irritating defect when I use them.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/pop-up-camera-phones-slider...
Unless they used something akin to a laptop webcam, there simply isn’t enough space for a third camera.
Interesting. I do use my phone a lot: slack/email regularly throughout the day, twitter addiction, videos in the background while doing other stuff, and reading; but you might be right that I'm overestimating it. (Screen Time says about 7 hours, I have no idea what that counts though)
Regardless, if the consensus in reviews is about 5 hours asking for 4 isn't crazy, especially since (IIRC) iPhones tend to do better than Android in battery life.
I don't understand the appeal of these notched/hole-punched/rounded screens on phones. They solve no real problems. They are a gimmick.
I'm currently using a Pixel 3a with multiple cracks in the screen. Willing to drop a lot of money on a phone but there isn't a single phone I want.
Still I searched the whole year 2019 for a replacement and finally settled on the Samsung A40, which has a FullHD(+) display, reasonably good battery, all features I wanted and is still lighter than other phones of same size.
You are right, around 140mm length would be fine, and then an equivalent weight of 140 to 150g. I cannot stand these bricks with their 180, 200g of weight, no matter the display size. These are just not usable for me.
I always thought iPhone would be restrictive. But I have my selfhosted apps and my wireguard (but ffs let me tunnel my hotspot connected clients through the vpn Apple!).
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.
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.
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.
Comparing with my Samsung A40 (5.9" diagonally), the latter is much smaller, and also lighter: https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=9320&idPhone2...
Edit: Both smartphones have the same display aspect ratio, but the XR seems to have thicker edges. The screen-to-body-ratio is only 79%, compared to 85.5% on the A40. So it must be wider and higher.
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.
You can also quickly, discreetly, and temporarily disable it, for instance if you are stopped by police. So this just isn't a real issue.
(Not sure how good this example is, but anyway - flagship doesn't have to be physically giant.)
> 2. You don’t want to carry a big iPhone
If you add those two up, you get "Middle school kids".
Though the apple watch with its own SIM has solved some of the "contact device without instagram" needs that parents want with their kids.
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.
I mean, I was a big fan of the nokia 8210, the iphone nano (the long one) and the razr when it first came out.
I dont watch tv/films on my phone because Im not insane, give me a smaller one!
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?
a) guaranteed not to be on until it's out
b) never eats screen space, ever
My current phone is a 7pro. I haven't seen a good replacement yet.
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)
I really want a microSD slot. Shared with the second SIM is OK, but please don't exclude it entirely. And/or more internal storage.
I'm on a Pixel 2 and am generally satisfied with the size of that phone, but I could live with smaller. My biggest problems are that 1) google screwed me with a non-unlockable bootloader when I sent it in for repair, so the software is slowly rotting and 2) I keep running out of storage. Other than that, the phone is basically fine.
From the reviews I've read, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 likes to draw way too much power and then thermally throttle - so probably not a great choice for a small phone (with both a smaller battery and less surface area to dissipate heat.) But, this phone probably won't ship this year, so maybe they'll have something better out by the time it does.
I wouldn't put "Hole punch front camera" on my "desired" list, but eh, it's not a dealbreaker for me either. I'd rather have a little bit of top and bottom bezel with decent front-firing speakers, and then stick the camera in the top bezel. Kind of like the current Xperias, only shorter.
Headphone jack would also be nice to have, but also not a dealbreaker for me.
Oh, and video output over USB-C would be another nice to have. I think it comes built-in with most recent Snapdragons, but Google seems to go out of their way to disable the feature...
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.
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.
And nobody I know has changed their communication. Discord, text, call. Everyone in my milieu is painfully average.
It would have sold like hot cakes! I would have paid extra for a smaller iPhone Pro.
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?
> # Why don’t you just use an iPhone Mini?
> 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.
[... snip ...]
Within 24 hours however, I was back at the Apple Store returning it. What was the issue? Nothing wrong with the device at all - it was everything I hoped it would be! Unfortunately, the issue was with the apps instead.
Developers have gotten so used to everyone being on bigger devices. Since the Mini _lowered_ the standard size of a device (and represented such a small audience), I found that most of my apps had various UI bugs as they were written to target a regular iPhone dimension or larger. In some cases, apps were unusable due to the UI bugs.
As an iOS engineer, I can also speak to the development side of things. At the various places that I've worked, I can't say that any testing was ever specifically done on a device smaller than the smallest _regular_ iPhone (like an iPhone XS). Even our team of QAs had all kinds of devices that they'd use and we had automated UI testing, but an iPhone Mini was consistently overlooked.
Maybe the device will be better in the future, but until then, the apps just aren't ready.
Granted this is my experience with iPhones and iOS apps. Android could very well be in a different place. I expect less out of the app development on that platform, however, developers are also more attuned to targeting smaller screen sizes, given how many Android devices exist, so it could indeed be a better experience if you find a device that you like.
* Detect if something is plugged in
* Detect if the thing plugged in is a 3 pin (stereo speakers), or 4 pin (stereo speakers, plus microphone)
* Detect what type of 4 pin configuration is connected (there are 2 standards, CTIA and OMTP)
* Detect button presses from attached headphones (volume up/down, pause/play)
* Detect the type of headphones connected (do I want to use the high impedance driver, or the low impedance driver)
And obviously: play stereo audio and record mono audio.
There's also some lesser used features that are sometimes supported over 3.5mm:
* Video output (!!)
* Antenna input, for use for FM radio
* Stereo audio input
* Optical out (not through 3.5mm TRRS, but it is at the end of the 3.5mm jack... Apple used to use these in their macbook pros)
Just be aware the the Wifi often drops and battery life is 1.5 days at best. But again, makes it really easy to not do anything distracting on it lol
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
And, yeah, it probably does compromise the waterproofing.
might have been true for mini 12, but mini 13 has amazing battery life, certainly nothing like 2020 SE which is truly abysmal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship#Flagship_as_metaphor
Now, whether an iPhone Mini fits into that metaphor can be debated, but it's just a metaphor, after all. :-)
The whole point of a lot of things is that they are unscalable and if they somehow do scale they are not longer what they were.
The simpsons also did the canyonero:
>[...] 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!
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.
It is otherwise an amazing little phone.
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've never heard anyone complain about the performance of the 13 mini before, maybe there's something funky going on with the OP's phone.
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.
Not necessarily.
I bought an iPhone Mini expecting that it'd be comfortable to use in a single hand like my previous Xperia phone of exactly the same width.
Unfortunately, it is not the case: the iPhone screen is very close to the bottom edge, and to switch apps you need to move your thumb to the very edge and then swipe up, which is rather uncomfortable (or requires holding your phone very low, in which case, you can't reach the top of the screen without changing your grasp). Similarly, the keyboard is rather low and uncomfortable to use from the otherwise most natural single-handed grasp.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/up-against-flashy-flagships-iphon...
Between the inefficiency of non Apple ARM chipsets and the inefficiency of Android, that’s not likely to happen.
The main benefit of cars was that if you delay maintenance your transportation doesn’t die.
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).
My previous Xperia Compact, which is of about the same dimensions as mini, survived for a couple of days easily when new.
> iPhone Mini has been weak in battery department [1]
The article says "solid battery life", which matches my experience with 13 mini.
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.
Considering how much USA cell companies are trying to kill 3G, and the fact that 4G/LTE has been around for over a decade now... I'm not sure this makes sense for anybody any more.
Edit: Yup, it’s nowhere to be seen on apple.com homepage. They don’t push it at all.
Or, if they really wanted the phone unlocked, they could just follow the suspect and tackle him while he is using it.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/uk-police-unlock...
So phones are not really getting longer in aspect ratio (except for some VERY long Sony phones), and they got more display area because of less thick edges. Naturally the mathematical diagonal size is larger, but that is a moot measurement compared with older phones with their 16:9 displays.
I am comfortable with everything less than 70mm width, and because the aspect ratio is kind of settled on 16:9 + navigation keys (or 19:9 complete display), the length is naturally restricted to ~150mm or less.
My A40 has 5.9" but still only 142 to 69mm in size. It does not feel like a 6" thing from 2017, and the reason is its small width and weight. Unfortunately, most new phones have width from 75+mm and weights of 190g or more.
Your point about bezels getting smaller is very true for the phones you mentioned. But you also left out the Pixel 4a 5G, the Pixel 5a, the Pixel 6, the Pixel 6 Pro, and the Pixel 6a. Which all ballooned massively in physical size relative to their predecessors.
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.
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
I'm going to buy a 13 Mini because of Apple's long term support, so it should last me a good few years.
Better flip phone would be good too.
Real example was Pixel until version 4. The only difference between smaller and bigger versions was the obvious screen and battery.
iPhone 12 and 13 minis are the same hardware with smaller screen and battery than their iPhone 12 and 13 (non-pro) counterparts. Are you referring to the SE or something? Even the SE has been getting upgraded processors with previous generation screens, cameras, etc.
The minis have been flagship specs in smaller packages. If the smaller battery thing was to be a knock on Apple for making it inferior, how do you suppose you fit a full size iPhone 13 battery into that mini frame with all the other internal hardware the same?
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....)
Can't wait to hear more!
My suspicion is, based on various bits of info I've seen, iPhone 14 won't see a mini and the next SE will be based on the current mini. They have been upgrading the SoC in the SE but not the camera nor the screen, and I bet they want to get that bumped up to something more modern. So this form factor/size may not be all that lost. Here's hoping, anyway.
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 just bought one with more-or-less the same wishlist, and threw Lineage on it, and it's perfect for me.
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.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/red-quits-the-smartp...
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.
Then just get a PVG100, it supports all the features as it was made for this network!
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.
edit: also buttons, like back, home, menu and search? edit2: like my ~ZTE v970 [1], but capable of newer https standards. Even teddit refuses to serve me content :D
1: https://www.gsmarena.com/zte_grand_x_v970-reviews-4597.php
I've a 12 mini now because I thought the original SE was losing support last year, I def regret not sticking with the SE for another year instead, for me the 12 mini is unreasonably big.
Second, it's only iphone. I hesitated for so long to consider it at all because it requires switching environments.
It consumed something like one battery per year, the integrated memory of 16GB are barely enough, but with a 64GB sdcard it worked fine so far. However, the mirco-usb connector became unstable years ago, but the wireless charging has very little wear and works fine.
I think an updated version (new processor, new camera, more RAM, modern network capabilities) should be able to check most, if not all, of the requirements from the website.
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.
Palm released a tiny Android phone in 2018, but the performance was crap so it didn't sell. Smaller phone means smaller battery and fewer cutting edge components, unless you fab everything yourself, making it more expensive. The tradeoffs don't work unless you're the richest company in the world.
This is not necessarily true, though something people often believe.
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.
I'm not surprised the Mini has been underperforming. I think it's in an awkward valley where it's not small enough for that to be an advantage, it's only small enough for it to be a disadvantage
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.
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.
Thanks for that
1. Bigger chassis allows a bigger battery, longer up-time. This is probably the biggest issue.
2. Having gotten used to a 6+" for a while, the small ones appear almost too small. Books are on average bigger than that for a good reason.
3. Very naively speaking, bigger looks better and thus more expensive. Users are therefore more willing to spend more money, whereas a smaller phone will look disproportionately expensive and, as per the first point, now less powerful.
Sony was the last one other than apple to try that, as far as I can tell.
However, cheaper smartphones still exist in that space, they just don't come with newer hardware.
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.
Front camera, 3mm headset jack are must for me. If I could get a notification LED too... You might be able to get a lot of money out of me!
Hardware - Not premium, but a great combination of rugged, good looking, and practical. It was a pleasure to hold (and still was last time I pulled it out), with the soft, grippy, rubber back and "just right" size. Removeable battery was a plus.
Software - Lots of nice little touches by Motorola. I wish Google integrated more of them when they bought Motorola, like the "double flick" to turn on the flashlight. One of the first with lock screen notifications in white.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
More accurately, I think that would be "unless you sell the most phones in the world." A niche iPhone still sells more phones than Google.
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.
I have to admit the S22 is one of the smallest high end Android phones that caught my eye.
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.
> are easy to use one-handed without dropping
I find it very hard to use one handed and it keeps slipping through my fingers if I try to type on it one handed. Also my finger constantly partially block the rear camera when taking pictures. It probably has something to do with the size of my hands. Otherwise, I love how light it is and you barely notice it in your pocket when walking or biking.
Without carrier phone whitelist, you won't be able to call on AT&T and many other networks.
If the smaller screen wouldn't make the phone even thinner I probably wouldn't care enough to switch.
I simply need something that I can use comfortably with a single hand, small enough to call it compact and hide in my pocket.
I totally get the appeal of a bigger screen though. I can appreciate it for what it achieves: bigger screen means easy to read, good for watching media, playing games and easier to type on it. But for my use case, I want to AVOID making it that easy to do all of those things while still getting benefits of a smartphone, let alone an iPhone.
That's why I am really bummed that iPhone mini is going away. I don't think I'll switch to Android, because I have a lot of apple devices and the ecosystem integration is quite valuable for me.
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.
https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/small_android_phone...
Yes. The problem is that apps have this power. As a user, I should be able to restrict access to certain folders, regardless of what the app requested.
> Unlockable bootloader
> NFC
You could’ve kept things simple and attracted a larger audience by just saying you want a smaller phone.
This reads like an over passionate CS freshman…….
“Dude wouldnt it b cool if it ran Arch Linux”
I’ve rarely heard net positive reviews for phones from no name Chinese brands like One Plus or whatever that thing is.
There just needs to be a smaller modern phone, that’s all. No TTL connectors, no OCAML based user environment.
I promise there are enough frustrated kids and adults in the planet to sign a strictly smaller modern phone petition.
Unfortunately the Smartphone world is pretty dominantly Apple, Google and Samsung.
Hopefully the petition will raise notice, but we all know companies rarely operate this way.
> 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.
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.
99/1?
90/10?
80/20?
I don’t know this myself. But I figure that if no one is stepping into this market, it’s probably pretty damn small.
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.
If nobody makes something like this, I'll likely switch to iPhone 14 when it's released.
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/unihertz-atom-xl-rugged-sm...
I used to have a Sony Xperia X Compact and when its SIM slot stopped working, I went looking for a new phone and there was nothing of that size. I got the Ulefone Armor X7 Pro which was basically the same phone with a worse camera, less shovelware, and built to last. Still fits in my pocket, more or less.
I now wonder if the camera I want isn't possible in the size I want.
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.
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.
The iphone 13 mini works well for me. No idea if this represents anybody elso on HN...
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.
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.
I've used external stylii and my fingers too, but absolutely nothing comes close to the experience of just sliding out the stylus which is always there and using it.
...so, a current flagship? Samsung's Galaxy S22 is smaller than both the Moto X4 and Nexus 5X.
Size comparison: https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Google-Nexus-5X,Motor...
In general, phone sizes have stayed roughly constant since the Nexus 5X, though the displays are getting bigger as the bezels get smaller.
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'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.
I’m typing this on my iPhone 13 mini; saying it’s inferior to the rest of the iPhone 13 is an overstatement.
All of the core features are the same as they rest of the line.
Ironically it’s the largest iPhone I’ve owned, having upgraded from an iPhone 7 and a 6s before that.
There probably won’t be iPhone 14 mini, so I’m glad I was able to get this form factor before I had no choice.
But for me and my house, pry that Mini from our cold, dead hands.
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.
1.fits nicely in pocket. I can sit down comfortably with it in a pair of jeans. No dodgy posture.
2. Won't fall out of my pocket
Its screen is also much less likely to break like has happened with all my old phones when they accidentally fall out of jacket pocket
> I’d almost go for a dumb phone
But nobody makes a small dumb phone either! I'd be ok with a dumb phone, if it is small.
Imagine if you could figure out a way of manufacturing a phone with design on demand… imagine a configurator website where you adjusted sliders and tickboxes. Headphone jack here, screen size slider all the way to the left, battery size all the way to the right, pick your color, oops you can’t have IP68 because you selected the pop-out camera…
Like variable fonts, but for hardware.
Frankly I’ve no idea how you would do it.
But that’s the level of innovation required to unlock this market.
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.
But I'll carry a MacBook as my phone before I'll go back to Android, no matter how small they make 'em.
There's this little Android smartphone from Shenzhen.[2] $104 in quantity 2, $74 in quantity 1000. You can get it from Amazon for about twice as much.
[1] https://www.thelightphone.com/
[2] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Small-Cellphone-3-0-I...
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.
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.
Edit: I'm not sure what the disagreement is but it's objectively verifiable that the 13 Mini does not have the same camera setup as the 13 Pro.
Size profile is basically the same as an old school Blackberry. No problems with it.
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.
I enjoyed MrMobile's review: https://youtu.be/skIgG8q_lKs
I love my iPhone 12 mini and prefer the form factor, but will go bigger, because of battery life.
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.
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.
I think it just proves what we already know -- there is a vocal minority (but strong emphasis on minority) who would like a customizable phone. The market largely doesn't seem to care. And it may even actively discriminate against customizable phones by ensuring they had no resale value. The more custom you want it, the fewer people who want to buy that particular device.
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.
How about getting one of those foldable screens in the larger standard size, and then just... tucking away the excess inside the phone body?
Y'know, like the marketing material for the iPhone X claimed it was doing: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0fd6daf2b9b742bf5dbf10... (though it actually wasn't.)
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.
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.
Have you tried KDE Connect? (Hint: It's not only for KDE desktop users.)
https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_xz2_compact-reviews-908...
"U must open the case and Put some sticker behind the lcd.ghost touch happen cause have contact between lcd and battery. Grounding issue"
I'm willing to try it.
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.
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).
Apple has weird economics where I'm sure they profit handsomely from iPhone Mini, but they tend to get rid of things if they don't make $10b annually.
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.
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?
Australians will jump at the largest, cheapest Soniq TV JB Hi-Fi sells. Likewise (with 'local' brands) in the UK.
Why not? It has happened before.
My Xperia XZ1 Compact:
- 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.
I think he meant diag screen size? The 11/12/13 are 6.1" while maxs are 6.7"
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.
[0] https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2022/02/05-chrome-a...
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/17/ios-15-beta-6-redesigns-safar...
[2] https://m-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/372064-940/Scre...
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/05/sony-mobile-strateg...
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.
I LOVED my iPhone 4 & iPhone 5 back in the day. I thought they were just perfect. I could reach all the keys, they fit in any pants, and they were just my favorite era of phones ever. Metal edges, glass front and back, no stupid camera bump -- perfection. For the time they existed, there was nothing to improve on those phones.
But I pretty much hate my iPhone Mini. And it has almost nothing to do with the phone -- it's basically an improved version of the iPhone 4, except now it's got a stupid camera bump. And I would still love the form factor, but like... so many things just don't fit right.
Apps just haven't been tested to work on it, especially if you tweak your default font sizes at all, and it's just a sub-optimal experience in almost every way. My fingers fit, but now websites are built with bigger fonts and need bigger screens. I passionately hate "viewport wobble" and you see it all the freakin' time on the iPhone Mini.
Book an Uber? The buttons are off screen, or weird places. Sure that's the app's fault -- and frankly a lot of apps need to do better for responsive design in order to better improve accessibility (especially for elderly users!) but that's a bigger fight than I want to get into when I pick up a phone and just want it to work.
So I don't know, like if I had a magic wand and could just zap every website, every app into compliance with the slightly smaller screen... sure it'd be great. But I don't, and that makes for a frustrating user experience that, frankly, ruins the iPhone Mini for me.
My iPhone 4 was the best phone I ever had. Hands down. Loved it, emotional memories of it are still very fond. Wish I could find that again, really do.
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.
Still hoping a phone even smaller than the iPhone 12 mini is released
Unfortunately it seems that it's a niche that doesn't generate enough revenue to get broader support.
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.
I would love a smaller phone then the pixel 3 but I'll stick with this for now, it's my absolute max size.
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.
If the camera were the same, I suspect many, many more people would buy the mini.
Also the z-flip battery life is atrocious, and the CPU is old prev gen tech.
I really want a top tier foldable.
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.
I truly do not understand why people refuse to buy flagship phones from a couple of years ago because they're "outdated" but then endorse some new phone with a garbage SoC that gets less performance. Buy an Xperia XZ2 Compact.
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?
No, we don't want ugly or clumsy phones. We don't want overpriced phones. We don't want brittle phones that can't stand a fall. We don't want phones with weak batteries that won't last a day. We don't want lousy cameras. We don't want laggy and buggy phones. We don't want good phones that are only available in other parts of the world where we can't buy them (Sony is making small phones...but only in Japan).
The companies should ASK the consumers what they NEED. But they don't.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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
I don't find the iPhone mini being any better in terms of size. They are both usable with one hand.
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...
No VC firm is investing millions expecting a 100x return in buggy whip startups though.
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).
* Lower performance due to small battery and poorer heat dissipation
* No physical space to put top-tier camera
It is a vicious circle. I blame the rise of non-removable batteries and the transformation of javascript from a scripting extension into a full fat application framework. It would be great if more sites had public API's.
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!
> RAV4
Viewpoint from Japan: is it small?. I feel same thing for BMW Mini because it's bigger width than average on the road.
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.
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.
It'll just sell one phone.
aPhone.
It's, a phone.
Not aPhone 1, aPhone 2. That's not minimalist.
Just aPhone, 2022 edition. And so on.
It's aPhone for people who like regular sized phones. 5.8" display max, 3-4ths of the way to flagship specs, a $500 ish price tag.
Pair it with near stock Android with minor adjustments only, and i really think the aPhone could be a hit and help build a (not a billion-dollar) multi-million dollar company.
[0] https://palm.com/pages/product [1] https://jacobhenryrussell.medium.com/six-months-with-a-tiny-...
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Palm-PVG100-Premium-Unlocked-Titanium...
Except I'm on AT&T pay-as-you-go for $30/month so I don't even look anymore.
Since we are basically doing market research, here is my take ;)
It is kind of sorted by relevance as it is in the order in which it came to my mind.
Here is what I need from a new phone:
- height between 145mm and 150mm
- width between 70mm and 75mm
- thickness up to 15mm, I honestly don't care
- storage atleast 128GB, expandable if possible
- 3.5mm heaphone jack
- USB-C 3 (at least 5Gbps)
- fingerprint (in-display, or front bezel, back is also acceptable)
- stock Android
- hardware security features of the Pixel Line (Secure Element, Hardware attestation, everything that would make the GrapheneOS people want that phone)
- "enough" RAM, maybe 6-8GB
- recent SOC but *not* a power hungry flagship, I want the efficiency king
- battery for two days of messengers and phone calls (no games, no social media crap)
- no glas where it doesn't need to be
- current wifi and bluetooth
- small top bezel for camera, ear piece, sensors
- small bottom bezel to better reach the on display controls
- fingerprint resistent, non slippery and light casing (maybe aluminium frame with tpu around)
- easy to replace battery (doesn't need to be hot swappable, but no glue, not burried under the mainboard or next to *flimsy* ribbon cables)
- IPXX rating
- camera on Pixel 5 levelhttps://thenextweb.com/news/bad-news-for-anyone-who-wanted-t...
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.
The problem with targeting small markets is almost everyone in the group wants absolutely everything the way they expect. There isn’t a “small phone market” there is a “small android phone with removable sd card and 3 cameras” market and a “small android phone with one camera but a replaceable battery at $400” market.
And then it just becomes literally impossible to make work so we have mass market products only.
In any case, I certainly hope they make a smaller devices again in 4-6 years.
Addendum: I daresay many of the demographic here at Hacker News likes phones similar to that of /r/Android: headphone jack, notchless rectangular display, SD card slot, notification LED, not-too-crazy design, and there's literally only one company doing all this: Sony.
[0]: https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=9082&idPhone2...
You could make customisable phones but they wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as mass market phones.
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.
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.
It was really expensive and was impossible to get at launch. The optical zoom was a nice touch but I didn't really care for the weird aspect they have.
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.
I still wish it had a future.
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.
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."
* “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.
Edit: Slight edits above for clarity. Also see Blackview Pro 11000mAh https://thenextweb.com/news/this-bonkers-chinese-phone-holds...
> 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.
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.
I'd pick a name that suggests that it's a lifestyle thing rather than being spartan.
I love it. It's SO much lighter, and small enough that I can reach the entire screen one-handed, so no longer do I need to awkwardly try to find a place to put down whatever I'm carrying in my other hand just so I can text or interact comfortably.
I knew the response sounded American, then this clarified it. I’d like to see the sale of phone sizes by country.
I did make a ruckus about small phones not existing. I have found 1-2 supporters of the idea within the dozens of people I complained to. Based on my small sample size I'd say 3-5% of the market would be willing to buy a small phone. A much smaller percentage would be actively looking for a small phone. I think those are optimistic numbers (sadly).
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.
https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_droid_mini-5603.php
Dang can't believe it's a decade old, I still have a few sitting in a box unused.
It seems like the mini didn't sell well and that is unfortunate, hopefully we can still have enough range of size choice within the iPhone eco system moving forward.
Sharp also makes a lot of interesting phones: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/japans-sharp-aquos-r...
Plus, Xperia Compact series is from Sony.
That made me wonder: - Why does it seem like Japanese manufacturers are the only ones making "different" phones? - Many other threads are talking about the lack of components and lack of component manufacturer interest, but if so, how did the Japanese manufacturers did it? - What is special about the Japanese market that allows these phones to survive? - What difficulty would there be for let's say Rakuten to sell their phones internationally just like Sony did?
A few points of relevant observation: - Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers have a habit of keeping their best products only to Japan - such as DSLRs. - There is a strong customer base for mini devices in Japan. GPD pocket laptops are in regular stores.
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.
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 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.
also, the physical buttons are way too easy to press. every time i hold it, i accidentally press something :(
5.5 inches is about the limit for me, with pretty avg hands, imo.
previous phones were sony xperia compacts. last one was xz2 compact and felt pretty good, though could have been a tad thinner/lighter.
The only people who like small form factor phones are tall men.
Every other demographic still needs two hands for a 5" phone and thus opts for more screen real-estate almost all of the time.
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!
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Canon+PowerShot+N+Teardown/6...
https://m.dpreview.com/products/canon/compacts/canon_n/speci...
Worse, they expect it to be cheaper since "it has less screen and battery it must be cheaper to make!"
If I browse the web in the, I cannot use my phone to buy my train ticket as you have to show the QR code and 4G is killing the battery really quickly.
My current phone is a one plus 5T and the new phone could have 3cm less in height and 1 in width while being 4 time thicker. Ideally I'd like addon battery to come back, you remember those nokia 3310 with the added huge battery? I want that. Now I have an external battery, but I need a cable and it's not that practical.
As a more general comment, I'd like "design" to be less important. I don't care if my phone is a dumb cube like shape. I want function.
It generally isn't, no. Looking at a teardown of the iPhone 5 for example (just the first phone I thought to check) there is a single Cirrus Logic class D amplifier chip that handles both the speaker and headphone outputs. I don't know of and cannot find any phones that have a dedicated amplifier chip for the headphone output although I'm sure one exists somewhere.
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.
E.g. vans within the Kei (keijidōsha) classification pretty much don't exist in Europe, but are common in Japan.
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.
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.
My only option will be to go for the Pixel 6a once it comes out this summer (I only want stock OS, and "LTS")
Pixel 5 - 144.7 x 70.4 x 8 mm
Samsung S22 - 146 x 70.6 x 7.6 mm
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.
Pixel 5 - 144.7 x 70.4 x 8 mm
Samsung S22 - 146 x 70.6 x 7.6 mm
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.
List of smaller Android phones with decent specs:
Pixel 5 - 144.7 x 70.4 x 8 mm
Samsung S22 - 146 x 70.6 x 7.6 mm
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
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.
Thickness could stay the same too, I'd like the additional runtime rather than everything needing to be wafer-thin.
Based on the responses and trends observed since then, I don't think this is ever going to happen.
Tech savvy users for tech savvy products are gone. It is now a consumerism and popularity driven market, small phones simply don't have the bling factor to sell.
Even if this was not the case, logically, if you have only one mobile computing device, you would be better of getting a big one so you that you can do more with it. Read more e-mail, watch more content, play more games, take better pictures (bigger phones tend to have more space for more options).
And for us die hard small phone folks, well, all of us need a phone, right? And since all of our phones stop getting updates after a few years (iPhone notwithstanding), we will complain loudly about the lack of small phones... and then buy a big phone anyway.
The best we can hope for is for manufacturers to make a loss leading mini line. Like Sony, Samsung, and Google used to do.
Now that they do not, I own an iPhone 13 mini, and I hope to use it with battery replacements for at least 4 years.
I put my money where my mouth is for the longest time. My phone history: iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, Sony Z1 compact, Sony Z3 Compact, Sony Z5 Compact, Sony XZ1 Compact (good golly gosh what a fantastic phone that was), Pixel 3, iPhone 13 Mini. But our market is too small.
RIP small phones.
Pixel 7 Pro dimensions: 163 x 76.6 x 8.7mm
Pixel 6 dimensions: 158.6 x 74.8 x 8.9 mm
Pixel 6 Pro dimensions: 163.9 x 75.9 x 8.9 mm
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.
There actually are more than one (gsmarena is better for this search), but not many and as far as I can tell none with wide availability or much hope of getting security updates etc far into the future. The best option at the moment seems to be ebaying an old phone that's supported by Lineage and hoping it doesn't die.
I like the general idea and wish that there were more small phones available.
Security (no practical eavesdropping)
Simplicity (just plug the damn thing in and get a hard connection; the connected device is much simpler)
Options (nothing prevents having both Bluetooth AND headphone port)
The only reason it's eliminated is it's convenient for the manufacturers and they try to sell it as if we all want it, clearly a marketing lie.
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.
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.
<10% of iPhones sold are <6". That's the ball game.
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.
Upgrade that to as good as Samsung S22 Ultra w/10x Optical zoom; also great macro capability, so make that 3 cameras.
>> 128/256gb Storage Fine, but I'd also like to see removable storage
>>4 hours Screen On Time (SOT) I'm looking more for 6h - I'd rather have a thicker/heavier device and longer battery
While I like my smaller Samsung GS8, I'm upgrading to the S22U and not the smaller S22 specifically for the camera and bigger battery (and the fact that the GS8 is no longer supported with upgrades). I'm not sure how I'll like larger form factor, but I'm sure I'll love the larger screen too, so trade-offs.
EDIT: Basically, I want a full set of top-of-the-line flagship features in a small form factor.
It used to be that smaller was extra, as it required more engineering, not smaller is cheaper like kiddie-plate food portions. I suppose we'll have to wait until the foldable formats become more unbreakable/reliable and they upgrade all the features to top-of-the-line.
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.
The Galaxy S22 has a similarly-sized screen, but the EU version is rubbish.
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.
I've just resided myself at this point. Sticking with a bigger phone. Currently enjoying 3 day battery life off one charge with my mid range Samsung.
replacement kit from ifixit is available thou
Think I'm going to carry my Z1 till it literally stops working. So far, I can still do 1 to 1.5 days with my battery easily.
* 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)
This means for the vast majority of people today, and hence customers, the phone IS the computer. It's the entry point for everything.
They consume content, shop and even work on that.
But phones have terrible ergonomics. Their productivity sucks.
One of the reason is the limited screen space.
For someone using a phone, mostly as a communication device, while doing important things on a computer, a small phone makes sense. I'm this kind of person. My phone is too big for my taste. Anything complicated, I reach for my laptop: it's more efficient. Phones are terrible at multitasking, and constraint myself to 2 finger typings, tabs that open in several steps and a viewport of the size of 2 credit cards?
But we are not the target.
For the target, a big screen is the mandatory crunch they need because they watch a lot videos, do banking, read pdf and even type work stuff on their phone. This tiny, constrained square they have to make do with for everything.
It makes small screen a hard sell. The iphone mini was not a great success if we compare it to other phones, despite everybody claiming we would all love it.
SHIFT5me - 141,5 mm x 71 mm x 9 mm
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.
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 said "phones", without qualification. So while your factoid is interesting, it has little to do with what I wrote.
There's definitely been cases of spyware locked onto chips in clever ways. Not good for 2FA.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Btw checkout Swiftkey's one-hand mode for typing, If you haven't already.
> until it breaks, becomes unusable
You say no, but then you give two cases in which you would be a person who needs a phone who would grudgingly buy something.
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 ...
Obviously play the car out a few decades and the emissions were _not_ so clean.
In any more modern system, you use a different component or subsystem for each. iPhone 5 is a pretty old example and speaker technology has come a LONG way in phones. These days, you're driving watts of power into your phone speakers, any headphones driven with that much power wouldn't last very long.
Even very high end headphone amplifiers (external, chunky ones) tend to be rated for around 1W max. Typical is much lower, in the 100mW or less range. Either way, you aren't listening at that high of power unless you want hearing damage.
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).
Yes, this phone is hard to use one handed, but the value of the large screen outweighs everything else.
For Sharp, they are also OLED/Camera CMOS manufacturer so maybe it's easier to make custom one (and it's one of a purpose to have own factory).
Japan mobile careers buy much amount of devices at launch from manufacturer, that helps for constant sales. Even if sales for customers is bad, it's already sold for career.
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.
I own an iPhone 12 Mini, and if it ever breaks in the future I plan to buy the iPhone 13 Mini, even though by that time it will be on the brink of being obsolete. And if that also ever breaks I will buy another 13 Mini again if they still sell it. No matter what.
Sorry to sound snarky, but make it smaller then. 4" sounds good to me.
https://bestsecuritysearch.com/hackers-can-eavesdrop-victims...
There's really nothing small about any of the Androids.
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 was dragged kicking and screaming from my iPhone SE 2016 as apps don't work on it anymore and it would shut down when it reached peak performance capacity. I used the Pixel 4A and have switched to the iPhone SE 2022. I get wrist tendon cramp from stretching to type and pinky strain from the weight on both phones.
I also loved the Xperia Compact line as it had pro features such as noise-cancelling wired earphones and NFC. My phone history: iPhone 4, Xperia V, Xperia Z1 Compact, Xperia Z5 Compact, iPhone SE 2016, iPhone 13 Mini, Pixel 4A, iPhone SE 2022.
- Just need a newer version to this series.
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).
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.
Indeed, all those things are much much easier and cheaper to produce than a smartphone. You could do them at your home.
Try building from scratch a small Android phone at home.
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.
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.
Nobody's going to pimp up CPU and Camera specs every year on a phone people claim is to just take calls and leave in their pocket.
I felt this so hard! Switched to iOS a few months ago after 14 years of Android (OG G1 user) due to privacy concerns and the lack of a small phone on Android.
iOS applications are almost universally better than their Android counterparts, but when it comes to the OS itself Android is light years ahead of iOS in terms of usability, convenience, and features. The iOS keyboard is such a steaming pile of bull dung compared to Android, and then there's call screening, notification actions, copy history, inter-application shareability, webview->browser state sharing, etc...
I would also say, a small phone is a great opportunity to add whatever features are necessary to offload usage to a watch (Bt,BtLE), car, smart home (UWB), smart glasses, ear buds. This seemed to be the way Essential was going. I would love the ability to hear my texts, either in ear buds or smart home, and hold my phones power button like a walky talky to dictate responses, almost like Android Auto. (Maybe even a knurled physical dictation button on the rail right next to where the gboard microphone soft button is located). And have UWB smart appliances know I was approaching and 1-factor authenticate me. All this to say, don't skimp on the innards which can help the device grow with accessories. I think accessories are really where a manufacturer can win. Where your phone just becomes a remote so all your other devices know it's you.
And when you are looking at the phone and using it, it needs to be weighted (battery down?) at the bottom so it balances in the hand better, a la Palm Pre (I so wish I had bought one instead of waiting for a second generation). No more pop-sockets!
I also suspect that narrower is more important than shorter. And thicker is better for battery and the bend test. Remember when Pixel 1 had an angle to its back? Imagine a phone that can lay firmly on a flat surface on slight angle, just enough to go into portrait or landscape mode, and not wobble. And if the speaker were on the back, it could use the flat surface to reflect the sound back at the viewer. (I think rog or another had an angled phone back that looked like broken glass).
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.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18538881
Weight is indeed and important factor. I recently held an iPhone13 Pro Max with acrylic case and was shocked by its weight,
iPhone13 Pro Max: 240g
Pixel 6: 207g
I hope that extra weight goes towards rigidity of the phone, Anyways its not intended for people with small hands.
+1 just for the chuckle I got out of this! For some reason I found that unreasonably amusing :D
More seriously, though, I would love for this to succeed and would absolutely be a customer. Personally, the IP86 water resistance is important due to being outdoors (cycling, running, hiking) a lot. However I understand that may not fit within the budget (I would pay extra for it though).
Best of luck!