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I believe I saw where you hear that people want small phones, they make them, and then they sell poorly. So, to the company at least, it doesn’t look like people want the smaller devices.
Now, I saw some comments in here about the smaller devices usually being less robust than their normal/pro counterparts, and that could also be a major reason small phones don’t sell.
I was small phone enjoyer until my Sony Z3 Compact. I really liked it, but after it died, I tried bigger phones and I couldn't go back.
There is a feature called single hand mode on most keyboards. Makes it something like this. I do however agree that small phones are nice.
My default setting. Big hands =\
Bigger screens mean bigger and more obtrusive ads.
I'm convinced this is 90% of the reason right here.
I don't want a small phone or a slide out keyboards.
I want :
Replaceable battery.
Non glass back.
3.5 jack.
I bought a pixel fold because the screen on the front is small and it opens in a wide format when I need to look at tables
Same reason I have a Samsung Fold. 75% of the time it's a small phone for small regular tasks. When consuming media, I open up.
I want a repairable phone. A phone where I can replace the battery
And screen. And buttons.
I also want something that's supported more than 3 years so there's a point to repairing it. Ideally, support should come from the community so it can be infinite as long as someone is willing to do the work.
I miss the times when I found 5" phones big. Now they just seem small because everything else is pushing 7"
You have to also consider that when 5" was big, bezels were big too. With today's thin bezels the same physical size that used to hold 5" could probably hold 5.5".
It also used to be commonplace to have a physical home button below the screen on a number of flagship devices, along with the camera being positioned separate from the screen.
I feel like that could bring us closer to a modern equivalent of 6” screens in the same body
Thought provoking!
Answering single handed on me iPhone 12 mini on latest iOS 😇
It is a great small phone!
That was discontinued after two iterations. Was going to switch to ios just for their mini range after years of Android, then saw that they got rid of small phones as well. Like, what would I gain by switching ecosystems if I know that the next phone is still going to be huge?
BTW, I settled for an S24, which is considered "small" now but still way too big, but at least Samsung has a decent one handed mode that doesn't hide half of your screen like ios or stock android but instead decreases the whole screen to bearable sizes:
Still feels like the damn clown mask meme, where, after years of increasing phone sizes, they now add a stupid software feature to virtually decrease screen size to remain usable.
Why can't we go back to small phones?
I think this is correlation, not causation, as this was also when touch screens started being made
I don’t understand why so many people here keep saying that it’s too hard to make a small phone when all these companies literally make watches with 5G connections…
They always lean a little too hard into making the small one the "budget" phone and end up gimping it into something nobody wants, and yet they still don't make it cost attractive.
Compared to the SomePhone Pro, the SomePhone Mini has:
Well, I can't speak for everyone else, but I can't go back because they don't sell any small phones.
Why can't we go back to small phones?
The iPhone SE is dead,
Is there any chance that you chose to lock yourself into a very small walled garden with a vendor who might make decisions about product that you might not agree with?
Apple is the only one making iOS phones, and Apple doesn't seem interested in small devices anymore, so that door is shut.
Right. You stick yourself in that garden, you are gambling that the vendor is going to come out with the product that you want.
There are still a few niche companies working on smaller devices, like Unihertz, but those phones almost always have low-end hardware and limited software support.
Well, size is kind of a constraint on what hardware you can put in the thing.
If what you mean by "limited software support" is "apps are going to be optimized for the bulk of users and will probably feel small if the great bulk of users are using larger screens", well...I mean, yeah.
The iPhone 3 SE you have:
4.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen LCD Multi‑Touch display with IPS technology
1334-by-750-pixel resolution at 326 ppi
Memory 4 GB LPDDR4X RAM
https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2022&nRamMin=8000&fDisplayInchesMax=5.5
Let's grab one from that list:
https://www.gsmarena.com/ulefone_armor_mini_20t_pro-13298.php
Size 4.7 inches, 53.3 cm2 (~63.1% screen-to-body ratio)
Same screen size as your phone.
Resolution 720 x 1600 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~373 ppi density)
30 pixels narrower, but 266 pixels taller than your phone.
8GB RAM
Twice the memory of your phone.
Can buy online in the US:
https://www.amazon.com/Ulefone-Armor-Mini-20T-Pro/dp/B0DJ74TQXT
And it was released October 2024, so it's pretty new.
Now, you may not be able to get an iOS phone that fits your hardware wants, but them's the breaks when you go with a platform that has only a single vendor making hardware for it.
That phone isn't actually small. It has a small screen, but it's 25mm thick and weighs 300g.
RAM is a horrible indication of phone performance imo.
The A15 chip in the iPhone 3 SE absolutely destroys the Dimensity 6300 chip in the 8GB phone you linked
A lot of people had liked iPhone because for the longest time android phones were not able to compete in the cpu/gpu space especially around the time of the iPhone 11.
Although now at the high end android phones are much closer together in performance so it’s more about what features you care about more between the phones.
“walled garden” - how many 5.4” android phones can you name from the current decade?
How many times is this going to be regurgitated? The question has been well and truly answered.
We don’t buy them.
That, and small phones on the Android side are often nerfed beyond reason, like a bottom-of-the-barrel Mediatek SoC with low RAM and shit storage option instead of the bigger model's Snapdragon and quality storage, or shit cameras, or garbage screen resolution, etc etc.
There is something to be said about the larger variant having more room for better cameras, but outside of that, the nerfing feels almost intentional.
