Why can't we go back to small phones?
https://www.spacebar.news/cant-go-back-to-small-phones/Open linkView original on infosec.pub645
Comments343https://www.spacebar.news/cant-go-back-to-small-phones/Open linkView original on infosec.pubhttps://www.spacebar.news/cant-go-back-to-small-phones/Open linkView original on infosec.pub
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.
Based on https://postmarketos.org/install/ the Nokia N900 can run the latest stable release of PostmarketOS.
Nokia N900 was a proper Linux-powered phone released in November 2009.
So yeah, it's been getting over 15 years of community support so far.
Edit: Fixed typo
What's wrong with Fairphone then? Think I'm gonna buy FP 6 when it arrives
I've also been looking at FP but I believe there are some issues of getting one outside of Europe.
We only get FF 4 here (US), and through a reseller (Murena). And my understanding is that there are caveats in the bands it supports.
I am in the US, and bought my FP5 through clove technologies in the UK. I'm on T-Mobile and get 5G and everything.
No Jack.
They are pretty expensive for the hardware.
Unless I’m misremembering don’t they charge flagship prices but have midrange specs?
Thanks! I didn’t know that was part of their thing. I just thought they made the phones repairable. Has their supply chain been audited by a third party?
I crossed them off the list after they ditched the headphone jack and the CEO tried to blow smoke up everyone's ass as to why. Then they introduced their new Bluetooth headphones.
Hum... So Fairphone ?
I really wanted to buy the Fairphone 5, but they don't ship replacement parts to where I live which makes the entire concept pointless.
Forward shipping exists.
OK, so that's a possibility, but when you start adding a ~$30 fee on top of the cost of the part and shipping from Fairphone you're looking at about $100 per repair, which stops making sense pretty quickly. You're better off spending a little more money on a good device that is dust- and moisture-sealed and taking care of it for a few years.
Makes sense. But you can offset part of the shipping from the fact that you can easily do the repair yourself.
Another possibility would be the HMD Skyline. Less repairable than Fairphones, but still far easier than most other smartphones. Only 2 years of updates though.
But starting from 2027, a removable battery will be mandatory for all smartphone in the EU, which mean most, if not all smartphone will switch to removable battery. This may also make repair a lot easier.
I am of two minds on this. I love repairing electronic equipment, it's what I do for a living, and I buy old tech to fix up all the time.
Replaceable batteries seem like a good thing, in terms of reducing waste for devices that are otherwise still useful... theoretically.
Realistically, the charge management circuitry and the battery chemistry in phones has gotten so good today that most batteries have a useful lifespan that is longer than the useful life of the device. Three years is easily doable for any mid-range phone on the market.
At five years you're probably going to be disappointed with the battery performance, but how many people are continuing to use a 5-year-old phone? At that point the internal technology has changed substantially and there might even be a new network standard that you want to use, so you're probably replacing the whole device even if replacing only the battery is an option.
On top of that, giving the user access to the battery means the phone body can't be fully sealed against moisture and dust, plus the access panel is a big mechanical weakpoint which means the body will be less rigid than a fully enclosed device and thus more prone to breaking when dropped or sat on. Adding those weaknesses back into mobile devices will make them more fragile and (I predict) will lead to more frequent failure and replacement of the entire device, which will offset any waste-saving benefit from the replaceable battery.
Plus, the addional space required to fit in the replaceable battery casing, the removable access panel and the contact points for the battery means either the whole device will have to be bulkier or the battery will have to be smaller (than it would otherwise be with a permanent internal battery).
Replaceable batteries made a lot more sense in 2010 when the batteries were shit (and sometimes still NiCad) and the charge management was basically nonexistent (so the battery cycling wore it out faster). Today it's weight and bulk, plus fragility that will probably lead to equivalent or increased e-waste.
My brother has a 6+ years old Iphone, my parents both have a 5 years old Samsung Galaxy Phone (S21 and A51). None of them complains.
Do you think computer waterblocks are sealed using glue? They aren't. Screws and a good old o-ring are all you need to make a repairable AND waterproof phone. But they don't want a repairable phone, they want you to buy a new one whenever possible.
I dropped my FP5 multiple time. He never broke. My brother IPhone got a shatered back, and he had to replace the screen once for falling from a distance the FP5 just shrug off.
True, but ot also don't have to be the old pogo pin way. Any currently available battery is a removable battery given it is user accessible and isn't glued to the board.
I wonder... What would be the biggest e-waste? A dead battery or a dead battery with a whole perfectly functional phone attached to it?
Unsure why you were downvoted. This is true
For being too forward, maybe?
I'm curious, how repairable? Like comfortable with a solder iron or slots and what not like a PC?
Repairable phones would be great but the demand for them hasn't undone the cost of design for them. There's a lot of tech in an incredibly small package, so repairable phone would still require people to have specialty equipment to repair.
Like very few people own an oven for working with BGA chips. And if we go with socket based chips, the thickness of the phone has to increase or the battery has to decrease.
Don't get me wrong, I think an open and repairable phone would be great. But having one is an engineering challenge that most phone makers have opted to just skip putting dollars into because the demand for one doesn't justify the cost. Your average buyer is just chasing shiny and doesn't see repairing their dinosaur as valuable.
But yeah, I'm sure there's plenty here that would love such a device. Sadly we are not the majority.
Imo I don't think the goal is/should be "every part is repairable by any average person without tools" tbh. Like that would be awesome but it also isn't realistic, like you said phones are super complicated. But making simple repairs – stuff like swapping a battery – possible for anybody is realistic imo, and then the rest should be as easy to repair as possible for local shops or someone who does have the necessary skills and equipment. At least personally I feel like that's a good spot to aim for.
It's sad that people have gotten used to just throwing away stuff instead of repairing it. Sure, some repairs really aren't worth it - like the screen I'd gotten replaced of my LG G3 that was prone to have this defect with its screen regardless of screen swaps and whatnot - but most of the time, it's just minor things that can actually be fixed by non-tech savvy person.
I think it should be of paramount importance that more companies are held accountable as to the amount of waste they're producing and how much they're contributing to pollution and waste around the globe. Unfortunately, capitalism is a thing, so that's not gonna happen.
Having repairable options for those that do care is awesome, though. If I could afford, I'd gladly go for a Fairphone if I ever need to replace my current phone (still going strong after 5 years of use). Until their mass appeal, they'll likely remain out of my pockets.
Replacing SMT components would fall outside of repairability for 99.99999% of people. More realistically things like ports, screens, and batteries should be replaceable since they're typically connected to the main board with cables. Furthermore ICs going back on a phone is probably extremely rare while the above mentioned items are very common failure points.
Bga is more about skill than equipment. I’ve done it with a cheap hot air gun and a toaster oven. Though it took many failed attempts to get right
But this isn’t always about your phone being repairable by you. It’s about your phone being repairable at all. Apple, google, samsung, et al have made it clear that they have no interest in refurbishing and repairing phones. That’s fine, they have the right to do whatever I guess. And further, this creates a great opportunity for many people to create small businesses.
America has very few markets left wherein one can create a business that is not utterly dominated by some conglomerate that will eat your shit. This is one where you can do so, with honest work (eg not just buying shit from Chinese manufacturers and reselling it on amazon for a profit).
However, the tech industry is openly hostile to small business and its consumers, so every business that has worked in this sector has been either destroyed or hollowed out to barely anything by big techs greedy bullshit in the name of security.
This would enrich communities: you would have another possible route where someone local could open a business within the community, that would hire locally within the community. But apple, samsung, microsoft, etc lobby extremely hard to make sure that they never have to stop pairing parts, providing spare parts, providing schematics, etc. and of course they’re not being asked to do this for free. They’re being asked to do this for a fair and reasonable cost, but they still refuse.
Now designing phones with user replaceable wear items like batteries or even common failure points like screens is obviously a good idea as well in theory but comes with challenges. However the challenges are mixed. Batteries can be user replaceable in thin and waterproof phones. The galaxy s5 is almost as thin and almost as waterproof as the s23 and has a user replaceable battery. If more engineering effort was put forth I’m sure it could be greatly improved. The issue is design; they (especially apple) don’t want to disrupt their “beautiful”glass back phones that 99.9999% of people slap a case on. User replaceable screens are more challenging to make waterproof but I’m sure they could figure it out.
But if the above was addressed, they wouldn’t necessarily have to. We could go back to the days of going to a small store next to your grocery store and getting your phone screen changed out for $150 while you do your shopping. except much more money because an iphone 16 pro max oled is ~ $700 just for the screen, which brings up the other issue of people don’t want to repair stuff anymore because component cost is outrageous. The phone is $1200 for the base model so if the screen and labor is $800 a lot of people will (foolishly) go “well for $400 more I can just get a brand new one!” even though it’s the same damn phone. However, these screen prices fall dramatically when the phones get even a few gens older and a bunch get recycled
HMD (Nokia) Skyline has a cool feature where you unscrew 1 screw and can change various things like battery. Unfortunately phone itself is not impressive especially from OS update standpoint (only 2 year support for major Android versions). I would love to see this idea being copied by other manufacturers.
I swear to god manufacturers do this on purpose so that they can point to the low volume of sales and claim "See! People don't really want these features" when in reality they've just slapped a couple good features onto a completely dog shit device.
Fairphone
I bought a refurbished Xcover 6p and so far it's great. There's also the perks of being intended for companies: very long software support and pogo pin charging accessoires.
Whoever owns the Nokia badge are selling phones designed specifically for repairability by end users; the only issue I have with them is they don't really say much about how long they're going to have software support, so expect it to last 4 to 6 years tops before replacing it becomes required anyway.
I think this is correlation, not causation, as this was also when touch screens started being made
it's also when mobile media in general was available on your phone. tv, movies, YouTube, games, everything. not everything is about porn.
You speak only for yourself.
I definitely was looking at porn on my 240x320 Nokia screen.
One boob takes up 76000 of your 76800 pixels.
You overestimate the resolution of porn back then. 90s kids needed some imagination to fill in the gaps...
Oh, I remember. Full res pic above the collar bone, then that weird speckled rendering for a couple lines and then... grey.
Sexy sexy nibbles the snake
Well, I can't speak for everyone else, but I can't go back because they don't sell any small phones.
I picked the Pixel 8 because:
If there was a smaller version available, I would've gotten that instead.
I almost did, but I found the 8 used for a good price and the size difference was minimal.
The only A series Pixel phone smaller than the Pixel 8 was the Pixel 4a.
That point absolutely still stands.
It's just strange that since the 4a, the 2 smallest phones Google released were both not in the a series.
I've been using the "A" branch of the Pixel line for years now.
But I use CalyxOS so I guess you and I have to be enemies now. My name is Inigo Montoya, you use a different OS, prepare to die.
Ah man... I just installed graphene to try it ... (turns around and runs)
.
Seriously though, would be nice if they could get along and share code and efforts, I'd love to try a graphene-hardened OS with sandboxed microg (instead of gsf) and datura firewall :) Maybe even have the option to have microg in one profile and google play in another. One can dream
Graphene and Calyx are two different paths to two different destinations. Graphene is for security, Calyx is for privacy.
Yep, that's what I gather as well. I just wish we didn't have to choose, and could get both
I can't trust anything made by google. It's a company that literally makes its money capturing everything everyone does on the internet...and yet the phone they make is the ONLY phone immune to having everything captured...
Sorry. Not buying it. There will be a chip in there phoning home we'll find out about in a decade.
I doubt that, but I respect the skepticism. I happen to trust the GrapheneOS devs to reveal if that was the case.
I picked the Sony Xperia 1v because:
I was considering a Zenphone 10 or Xperia 5 v - mainly for size and brand reasons as above - when i found this for £650
I picked the 5ii for similar reasons at the time.
The problem is it only gets 2 years of support, so I haven't gotten an update in years. Sony is living in 2010.
The fingerprint reader slowly stopped working 6 months ago via a prolific software bug that is all over forums for xperias that will never be fixed.
The battery (even ONLY charging it to 80% using battery care) is horrific after a few years, mediocre when I got it and the standby time is shit. It loses 1.5-2% battery per hour not being used at all now. I get maybe 4h SOT browsing (much less with video).
The default camera app is crap and not even worth using...
I want to try lineageOS when I get the time to see if it fixes the battery and fingerprint reader, but here in Belgium we really need access to our bank apps because almost everything is done through there.
Edit: also the xperia 1v has a glass back... https://m.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_1_v-12263.php
I had a 5 II too, used lineageOS for years, worked great. Doesn't totally solve the battery or fingerprint reader. My screen got the dreaded green lightsaber too. Nail in the coffin was Australia turning off 3G so it can't make calls anymore. (Wasn't officially sold here so they didn't bother loading it with VoLTE profiles)
Is there an 8a? Those are usually the smallest model
There is. The screen is smaller, but the actual phone is bigger 🤦♂️
Wow, dumb. The last a I had was the 4a, which was notably smaller.
If the pixel series had a damn SD card slot it would be the perfect phone for me.
I just want to sync all of my music and local backups to an SD card via syncthing dammit. I don't want to have to pay 200€ for them adding a 5€ chip
I’m clinging to my SE. It’s the last small phone made by anyone other than Chinese no-names. I will be sad when it’s no longer viable as an option.
my Chinese tiny phone has a name, it's the Unihertz Jelly Star. they even have a subreddit, not sure what makes you think it's a "no name" they make a lot of phones for niches in today's world including one with a physical qwerty keyboard.
now the fact that they're the only company filling those niches sucks, but it's better than nobody doing it.
Well, how's it supported? This is usually what kills these phones. Even brand like Xiaomi dump their non-flagship model really soon. I have one, bought as a new model, was officially supported for like a year. Great.
I'm not really sure. what happened when it was no longer officially supported?
It just stopped receiving updates, even security ones.
But can it run a degoogled Android rom well?
not sure. stacking niches means there's a good chance the answer is no though.
if it's just a matter of specs it should be up to it, the hardware is pretty beefy for a phone, but I figure there's more to it than that.
personally I don't have the spoons to pour in the effort required to degoogle. the fact that the algs and few ads I see are completely irrelevant to me suggest that I have thoroughly confused them by how non-standard my internet usage is. I'm not overly concerned about the data they do get or what they do with it.
there are enough Man-Made Horrors Beyond My Comprehension™️ keeping me up at night but you do you
The old jelly pro had a decent modding community, and I definitely was able to unlock the bootloader and root it, though not sure about degoogling.
There was the iPhone 13 Mini. It’s adorably small. But it didn’t sell well so they stopped making the Mini line.
I've got a 12 mini and bought it just because it was small. Had nothing else from the apple ecosystem (altho I did buy airpods with the phone cause it had no 3.5mm jack), and still bought it just because it was small. People like to point out and laugh at how tiny the phone is, but I don't care cause at least I don't have to carry around half a tablet everyday. Sad to hear they discontinued the mini line, even tho I wasn't planning on buying apple again.
I’ll use my 13 mini until I literally can’t anymore. Sadly it seems like maybe Apple will release a clamshell to get back to the pocketable size but never a mini phone again. Wish the 16e used a mini chasis
Still using mine too and it's awesome, all my coworkers also notice and compliment it. I do think there is a market for small phones
I've been maining a Unihertz Jelly Star, I quite like it.
I want one. Can you put a custom ROM on them?
per @[email protected] in another comment here:
Yeah, I can't ever find modders using the new one and I'm not willing to get an old used one.
I am using Unihertz Jelly Star for more than a year now with custom LineageOS ROM. Works well with it. I used this guide to flash it: https://www.reddit.com/r/unihertz/comments/16sviga/unihertz_jelly_star_running_great_with_lineageos/?rdt=36027
Nice. Actually logged in to save that post. Thanks
I upgraded to a Sony Xperia XZ2 compact last year. It has a 5" screen and decent capabilities, the only down side is it doesn't support 5G. For a phone that's over 5 years old, it's probably the most recent usable phone available which actually fits in my pocket.
Seriously, don't show me a damn tablet computer and try to sell it to me as a mobile phone. If you can't make a compact phone then you're not really advancing the technology, are you?
If I can't use it one-handed (using ALL physical buttons and ALL parts of the screen), then it's not a phone.
Seriously, this is how we used to define the difference between phones and tables - one-hand or two-hand use.
Right? I mean I'm still lamenting the loss of slider keyboards, typing on a screen is so damn unreliable that I was forced to turn on the auto-correction, which itself is highly unreliable and constantly changing real words while failing to fix the words where I hit a number instead of a letter (the word "9f" gets typed a LOT!). I use my phone for phone calls and sending texts, with a secondary usage as a GPS in my truck. If it can't perform one of three basic tasks then what good is it?
They do, but service providers don't like selling them. There isn't as much of a return on smaller/ dumb/ cheap phones. I used to work at spectrum, and we'd speak of the cheap phones in hushed tones like they were the boogeyman. It felt horrible because I was using my cheap android while selling people iPhone 15s.
So once again instead of providing choice the market is simply phasing out things with smaller profit margins as if they planned it together in some kind of cartel.
Demand also isn’t there. The iPhone SE sold ok, but the other thing to keep in mind was that it was the cheap iPhone too so it’s supposed to sell.
If it was outselling the main model every year then they’d keep making them small. But they didn’t so they got dropped.
Why would they do that if they make more money on the main model? It's not like you have a choice in iOS manufacturers.
Not really, even the cheap phones have large screens now. There’s no correlation anymore between price and screen size, the cheap phones just have lower quality panels.
I agree. I just worked there when I was younger. I no longer work there.
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:
This is exactly the problem. I don’t need a budget phone, I need a small phone
Hell I wish the big phones had SD card slots...
There are very very few phones that have them anymore. Chinese phones, Sony, fairphone, and Samsung midrange, that is about it...
The latest pixel pro is available in both the regular size and the XL. In previous models the pro was only available as the XL.
The "small" P9P is considerably larger than the iPhone 12/13 mini, which is the size OP wants.
What’s the website you used to make this? I used to have it bookmarked a long time ago but I can’t find it anywhere now.
Phone Arena's size comparison tool.
Yes, I also want smaller phones. Even my "regular" sized phone doesn't fit into running shorts phone pockets unless I remove the case, but even then it's a tight fit.
Yes they should put HUGE batteries into small phones!!!
/s
i don't think it's "too hard" to make small phones. but i bet it's easier to sell bigger phones with more profit margin.
Seems like a straw man, because I can't see a single comment claiming that.
Who said that? That's not the limiting factor. Also, smartwatches have crappy processors.
Supposedly, what's hard is making a phone with good performance and battery life that's also small.
I don't want a small phone or a slide out keyboards.
I want :
Replaceable battery.
Non glass back.
3.5 jack.
The xcovers backs usually stay on when you drop them and the back only really holds the battery in. The internals are protected by another layer of plastic.
As you say the specs do suck though.
They exist, but it'll constrain your phone choices a lot.
I'd just get a USB-C-to-1/8"-TRS adapter. If you want to charge while playing, you can get one with passthrough.
Without passthrough:
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Adapter-Female-Samsung-Devices/dp/B08Z3B5QL3
or with passthrough:
https://www.amazon.com/ZOOAUX-Headphone-Charging-Earphones-Compatible/dp/B094Z6149B
Can probably just leave the thing plugged into your headphones.
Yeah I get they exist, but I will lose that in a day
Just leave it plugged into the headphones, don't even take it off. I mean, I have 1/4 inch audio hardware, and I've got 1/8 inch headphones that have a 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch adaptor that just lives on the end.
I totally understand people who want to use wired, TRS headphones. They're inexpensive, widespread, aren't going to become e-waste when their battery dies, aren't going to become obsolete when radio protocols move on, are lightweight, don't suffer from radio interference etc. I have a bunch of TRS headphones and like them. Only downside is that they need some power source if you want to do ANC, but it's not like one has to have ANC.
But...I think that a lot of people are treating it as a "we live in a Bluetooth world or a wired headphones world, and which we do depends on whether there's a TRS jack on the phone itself".
I'd also add that if you have a USB-to-TRS device acting as your DAC, you can swap in others, aren't stuck with the on-phone DAC. I had a phone that had an extremely obnoxious tendency to, when charging in the car, play noise back through the headphones jack (and thus to my car's aux jack and through the speakers). Was fine on Bluetooth. Problem was that the manufacturer had failed to stick the proper filtering circuitry in the power supply for the DAC and was spewing noise from USB power into the audio output, probably because you couldn't see a problem when the phone was running on battery and filtering circuitry for the DAC uses up space in the cramped confines of the phone. (In practice, USB power can be amazingly dirty -- I was astonished watching some people with oscilloscopes look at the power lines on USB.) Anyway, the noise was appalling. If you use the built-in DAC, you can't really change the thing out. With an external DAC, you can stick a reasonable one in.
I don't know how the ones I linked to above perform. But I'm confident that if they are a problem, there are other DACs out there. Whereas with a built-in jack, you get the DAC that the phone manufacturer provides, and clearly some are willing to ship their phones with an inadequate DAC.
I'd kind of like to see someone set up a rig with intentionally-dirty USB power and a bunch of USB audio interfaces and USB-powered devices with an audio output and then see how much noise leaks through into the DAC's output.
EDIT: I also had a (purely analog) audio mixer at one point that used USB power and also leaked audible -- not as bad as my phone in the car -- noise from the USB power source into the audio. Solved that by moving it from my computer's USB output to a dedicated USB charger. I'm sure that there's still leakage and if I were doing pro audio work with that hardware, I'd still be looking at it, but at least it isn't easily-perceptible to me any more.
I also had an inexpensive USB audio interface that leaked a little audible noise into its output, one of these:
It wasn't terrible --- I used the thing for years --- and on that, moving the USB cable around would adjust how much audible noise was making it out the DAC's output, so it was definitely unfiltered noise coming in from USB power.
I think that it might be underappreciated how bad the DAC situation in home electronics is. I haven't seen people trying to measure and quantify it. I have seen lots of people going to great lengths to measure frequency response on headphones, whether or not a digital data cable has (probably completely unnecessary) shielding, and worry about the encoding of their music and sometimes even its encoding for wireless transmission to headphones over Bluetooth. But "how much junk from the power source is leaking into the DAC's output" seems to be a curiously un-measured area.
Galaxy Xcover series.
Because every time a manufacturer releases a small phone, nobody buys them.
Why can't we have both? I want a bigger phone. Bigger than what I have now, and many people would consider this to be a fairly large phone.
But I don't want to stop people who want smaller phones from having those, too.
Right? Everybody has different size hands, my hands are on the larger side and these bigger phones of today are actually pretty comfortable to me
I have fairly small hands, but still prefer a larger phone. More content on the screen and space for battery.
HOWEVER, I'd take both. A small phone would be a good secondary device. I want something modern the size of my Samsung Galaxy Ace (GT-S5830i). The back also has a really nice texture.
Oh, yeah, it also has a headphone jack, MicroSD card slot and quickly swappable battery which I should probably replace because it seems it has slightly increased its capacity... volumetric capacity.
But I also prefer a bit more thickness so it doesn't feel like a fragile, slippery sheet of glass (rugged phones are good for that).
You can already get big phones though.
They're saying the smartphone market is too homogenous and there should be more options so that people actually have a choice in the device they buy.
Yeah, but most cries (including this article) aren't "We want both" but "We want small instead". The article goes out of its way to ridicule "huge" phones.
The battle cry seems to be demanding it their way instead of variety.
Not big enough.
I’d like to see more options out there. But there are reasons it could be difficult. I’ve been a software dev for 25 years and we’ve had take our software from local installs to web services, then mobile web services or responsive interfaces for all screen sizes. Then mobile APPs came along… and we do have to decide which devices and screen sizes we’re going to support. It’s hard to justify spending 20% more time so that you can support 2% more people. And for my app anyway that’s how many tablet users we have. 2%. So we’ve never done tablets, period. If we had to support some phones that were 3x the size of others, that would be kinda hard too, and we’ll always choose to spend the bulk of our time where the bulk of our users are.
Just a real answer. Supporting different screen sizes isn’t free.
Yep, got big hands myself and own an S21+, and the keys on the keyboard are still too fucking small. Sick of correcting nytypos after 10 years, so finally not giving a fuck.
Ironically, i typed this entire comment without a typo, gotta love how that works.
Edit: oh wit, found onr. Guess y'all just gotta deal with ut.
If you're not using Swype or whatever it's called on gboard give it a shot. I have dumb fingers and I can text in my work gloves.
Oh yeah buddy, been using swiftkey for idk 6 years but I'm not in the habit of using it most of the time because half the words I swipe come out the wrong word 😄
It has to learn from your "style". I'm using... something, can't be bothered to check, but because I don't let it phone home I've had to adjust my "style" to it's default behavior. Wasn't too bad learning it.
"Why can't we go back to small phones"
I do, I bought smallest phone available from known company. But most of those companies just decided you need huge phone that can't fit everywhere, removed sdcard slot, removed headphone jack. Last time I remember nobody asked them to remove those features. I think it is the same enshittification like with everything, they no longer make cheap houses, smaller cheaper cars, actual budget gpus etc, etc. Feels like every company targets top 20% and the rest - gtfo and be damned.
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.
Small size means a smaller battery. If they make the phone's processor too powerful, the battery will run out in less than a day, and then everyone will be mad about that. There's also less surface to dissipate heat.
Making things smaller is harder and more expensive, but people who want small phones don't want to pay more than large phones.
Not to mention: the old people (the ones with money) can't see them.
They don’t care about “you”. They care about their “consumers” (as in, you in bulk), who don’t buy them.
It’s capitalism; simple as that.
But I want mine to have a goatee, why doesn't apple give iPhone a goatee?
OP is an iPhone user. They're very used to their tiny phones and they love them and simply can't understand why everyone wants a large phone.
It's a blind take. If iPhone 16 Pro Max sold less than iPhoneSE, then they would still sell the latter.
But there is no comparison.
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?
Right. You stick yourself in that garden, you are gambling that the vendor is going to come out with the product that you want.
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:
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
Same screen size as your phone.
30 pixels narrower, but 266 pixels taller than your phone.
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.
people spend a third of their lives on those things. And while cumbersome, a big screen simply is better for media consumption
only way I see smaller phones make a comeback is if we change our habits or if a new technology comes along
I don't know. more than 60% of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and it keeps increasing
A bigger screen is better for text consumption, too. Perhaps especially for that. If you don’t know why, just wait ;D
Seriously as a person getting on in years I always bump up the font size. And if you do this on a mini phone, you run out of usable space immediately.
I wish there were small phone options, too, but I can see why big is the default.
I believe the RAZR foldables allow you to do almost anything on the front screen, and in the latest iterations the front screen is larger than Samsung's.
Because apparently people want big phones.
For the last 10-15 years it's been a boiling frog situation really - .1 or .2" increase every generation until 7" somehow becomes the norm (for a phone, not a tablet, mind you).
I wish there were more small hi-end phones too.
People don't buy them for the price they'll buy bigger phones. That's it. That's the whole story.
They have to make the phone cost $300 less to sell in meaningful numbers. Why do that when they could just not make them at all and sell fewer models at higher prices?
exactly, profit margin. people aren't upgrading every year like they used to, so they have to make up (some of) that lost profit by increasing prices.
Yes, $300 was for the current flagship back then.
Here's what I want, roughly in order of priority:
I currently have a Pixel 8:
A community-supported Linux phone would be awesome, since I'd get 1 and 3 by default and 2 by convention, but they don't meet my minimum needs from a phone: reliable basic feature support. Hopefully we get there by the time my Pixel dies.
My main complaint is that they don't directly support the US. There's a reseller here, but I think there are issues with some bands.
Maybe it'll be better the next time I need a phone.
I'd be fine with /e/OS I think, GrapheneOS is nice, but not a hard requirement for me.
The Fairphone is interesting, but it is also enormous unfortunately
And notably the pixel 8 is significantly smaller than the 7
I'm using a Pixel 5. Replaced the screen and battery recently because there's no modern option for me. My thumb will be able to reach all corners of the screen in one hand operation or I'm just not buying it. I'd probably be better off without a phone anyway.
Consumers just aren’t that interested in a product that’s visibly cheaper and worse than what everyone else is carrying. And that is what a smaller phone signals.
Phones are a status purchase; they all do basically the same things, but most people gravitate towards higher end phones because they offer all the fancy features. Flagship phones are all large, so that’s what you see in the marketing. Just like you’ll never see a car company put its cheapest base model on a car catalog cover.
A smaller phone tends to cut corners; it’s not just smaller, but also functionally worse. While the price might be appealing, the potential customer also knows that using said phone will mean a worse experience, and might even get them ridiculed because they got ‘the cheap one’.
So we can absolutely go back to small phones - we just don’t want to. Smaller, cheaper, worse products just don’t appeal to a status-conscious buyer. If phone manufacturers offered the same specs at different sizes, that might change. But any savvy tech buyer knows a smaller phone is worse than the bigger one.
Back in the pre-smartphone days, size was a thing companies could compete on since customers wanted small, light, distinctive designs in premium materials. Like the Motorola Razr V3. These days, that just doesn’t work.
At least on the iPhone side the 12 and 13 mini were full flagships in a smaller form factor. I just wish we could go back to that
There is always the iPhone SE 3 with 4.7 inch display or the iPhone 16e with 6.1 inch display.
I had never heard of the 16e and checked their site, it will only allow comparison up to the 11, a phon from 2019. And its expensive.
Yes. The 16e released only 2 days ago and it is an entry level version of the iPhone 16. And you are right, it is not that cheaper then the full-size version.
Its an entry iphone, I wouldnt say 16 given it shares very little with it.
That's because it's stupidly downgraded and aimed at people upgrading from the 11. It's a no-one phone, there just to make people think, "well, the 15 is just $100 more, let's buy that instead". It would be a remarkable phone, if it were $200 cheaper. But Apple just can't let an opportunity to scalp consumers go. Only Apple charges so much for a 60 Hz screen.
I see what you mean
I will say, when a company tries sometimes they can make small work really well:
There are opportunities to make small desirable. But I know people like their big trucks, I’m sure people like their big phones too.
Bullshit, at least with the people I know. Literally nobody I know is interested in how much my phone cost me.
Correct, as the article points out. Sites aren’t made with smaller screens in mind, and 62-68 percent of web traffic is made with phones.
Phones are not JUST a status thing, but having a better one is certainly more appealing to consumers, rather than a device that they and others know is purposefully gimped.
This author should’ve spent digging into the iPhone 12 / 13 mini, and how it was received in Apple communities a few years ago.
That experiment really showed that the small phone demographic is passionate and vocal, but small (no pun intended). Those phones sold well when the small-phone-fans ran out to buy them, but the sales numbers cooled off quick.
Given that Apple is working on a lightweight 17 “air” phone, my guess is that they learned screen size is too important for too many people, but they’re going to see if they can strike a middle ground with weight / pocket fit.
The 12 mini had really poor battery life. I have the normal 12 myself, and even that one has underwhelming battery life, but the mini was way worse. Don't know about 13, but I would hope that recent advances in chip efficiency and battery technology would allow for making small phones with good battery life. Just please make it a little chonkier if you have to.
I had my 13 mini for two years, and in that time I never once felt like the battery was on the way out. At worst it would be around 20% when I went to bed.
Yes please. I really dislike iOS, but I use the iPhone 13 Mini for work and it's the perfect form factor. I desperately want an Android phone that's the same size, but I'm rocking a Flip which is the best I can do for small form factor right now.
The iPhone 13 mini was the perfect size and if Apple would have used that as a base for their new SE instead of the shitty 16e, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. Just give me a thicc 13 mini with a good battery, camera and a new processor.
Same, and I've never used an iOS device as a daily driver outside to work. I would literally dump my whole investment in the Android ecosystem over favourable form factor, especially now that Apple is on board with USBC.
I'd buy another 13 Mini, but I'm worried about how long it'll be before planned obsolescence takes over.
I‘m also on the lookout for a cheap used one. The phase till planned obsolescence is surprisingly long with Apple as long as you have the tools to swap out the battery yourself. My wifes XS is still running great and thats a 7 year old phone by now. As soon as the batteries hit that 80% or lower degredation, they run like shit.
I‘m sure you could get at least another four years with updates out of it at the moment.
Check out unihertz jelly phones, they are pretty impressive.
Thanks for the recommendation! I've checked them out before but found them a bit too bulbous.
there is one option.
well and a couple others that are also made by Unihertz depending on your needs/wants
more companies making them would be cool but the general consensus I'm reading here is that there are 0 and that is incorrect.
I have their old Jelly Pro, awesome tiny phone, replaceable battery, fits easily into any pocket, was my daily driver for a few months, but then again, it's just a bit ... too tiny. Also, battery life sucked, camera quality forget it, speaker not loud enough, low res screen, etc. I'd be curious if they improved on these things with this new version.
Still, one thing is still missing from the specs is 5G support. I mean, 4G is plenty fast, but not very future proof, carriers are starting to shift more towards 5G, 3G is already being phased out, and it's just a matter of time before 4G follows.
yeah the screen is very small but that's kinda the point for my use case. I didn't want all the limitations of a dumbphone (i.e. I wanted banking apps, gps, useful browser) but I wanted to add friction to my phone use to encourage me to use it less.
battery life is great, lasts me almost 2 days without a charge and will typically go from almost dead to almost full if I plug it in while driving to work. part of the battery life being so good is that I use it less and keep it in grayscale 99% of the time I figure though.
camera is great, it's 48MP the same as an iPhone 14 Pro. the pictures don't look great on the device because of the tiny screen but when I look at them on my computer or the pixel 6 I still use at home they look great.
speaker is pretty awful, it's fine for calls but music, fuhgeddaboudit! I have a Bluetooth clip on speaker that's great and I don't really watch videos on it so non-issue, for me at least.
screen res hasn't bothered me but again that might just be use-case. most of what I do is reading text and it's fine for that esp with high contrast on, looks ugly but again that's friction and I want that.
Yeah, sounds like they improved quite a bit, I might consider it, thanks! Still, lack of 5G means not so future proof
Answering single handed on me iPhone 12 mini on latest iOS 😇
It is a great small phone!
Because most people don't buy them?
It's like asking "Man, why don't they make slider phones anymore?" (and I loved my slider phone).
There is no option to buy them. That's the point.
Zenfone 8 and 9 are valid options, I'm using one rn
obviously they did exist. why do you think phone manufacturers would stop making them if they were as profitable as the other sizes?
Would you pay $1000 for one? Economy of scales matters...
Plus everyone who did look at them would say it is smaller it should cost less! Even though a smaller phone would be more technically challenging to build. Next you have compromises. No matter what you take out to make it work. People would bitch, I need that! I don't need this other thing! Next battery life, people complain about current battery life, you think they want less?
I could go on, but I can easily see why manufacturers don't want to deal...
It used to be the only thing you could buy. Then they started making bigger phones. Now everyone buys those instead. They stopped making them because people stopped buying them, not the other way around.
I'm probably gonna annoy people with this but I will shout it from the rooftops
Unihertz makes one.
I don't think it's the consumer market. It's more expensive to manufacture with physical controls, keyboards, and moving parts. It wasn't lack of consumer demand that killed the phono jack.
you could get a Unihertz Jelly Star like me
As a lover of small phones, unfortunately that's the truth. Apple tried a couple years ago with their iPhone mini and sold very few. Still, there should be enough of us that maybe some smaller phone manufacturers could fill this niche.
And maybr make it fully unlocked and repairable, replaceable battery, etc. while they're at it.
Did I overlook the sales numbers? Do they exist?
You're right, I thought I remembered that article giving actual figures but instead it just handwavily says they didn't sell many.
So, here is one that actually quotes a number, 3% of the whole iPhone lineup: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopular-march-quarter/
And another: https://www.cultofmac.com/news/iphone-13-mini-makes-up-a-tiny-percentage-of-apple-sales
And another, this one says 5% for some reason: https://www.notebookcheck.net/iPhone-13-Mini-sales-continue-to-disappoint-as-rumors-claim-the-iPhone-14-Mini-may-be-axed.593194.0.html
Either way 3% - 5% is a small number for Apple (or Samsung, or...) which might not justify making a small phone, but in absolute numbers, thats actually a lot of people! A smaller manufacturer should definitely be able to profitably fill this niche...
Why does it need to the most people buying them. Why can’t it be a minority?
Because cell phones are a business. If not enough people buy a format, it dies out.
See: Rotary phones.
You can. Ditch Apple and join us. Plenty of small phone selections here on the other side. Edit: you know what. Android doesn't have that many either.
I don’t want a small phone, I just want a normal phone that I can use in one of my normal sized hands. I have an iPhone 13 Mini right now and it’s pretty ideal but I know they’ll go end of life one day and there’s nothing to replace it right now.
If they're going to make only bog phones they could at least bring back all the hardware features they've removed over the years.
because i want to play the entire gamecube library on my phone goddamnit
Hard agree
I switched from OP 9 Pro to a Z Fold 6 to get the best of both worlds - a small, TV remote-like phone by default and a square-ish tablet for media and multitasking. Couldn't be happier.
At the same time, I do understand people who thought the width of Samsung's Folds is too small - my first consideration was OnePlus Open anyway, but upon actually holding it in store, I realized that Z Fold 6 is just more comfortable for me to hold closed.
I'd never want to pay 2,500 for a phone... tht's just insane
I absolutely agree, luckily I got mine used for 870€.
Your spending that much on a used phone? I can't phantom paying more than $600 for one
You're willing to pay that much for a phone? I think my last one was $350.
OK, now someone else go lower.
I get that too. It helps to put it in perspective:
I work for a company that repairs these. The Flip and Fold phones have been riddled with issues since day one.
They're literally plastic screens. Over time the crease on the screen where the hinge is will get so deep that Samsung's required "screen protector" will no longer adhere. If you close the phone and the hinge decides to break, you can never open it a full 180 again. If you accidentally open it all the way too fast, you will literally rip the screen off the frame. The weak point is hinge which could lead to a thick black line across, or upper or lower portions malfunctioning. One day you may open the phone and it's unresponsive to touch. Screens randomly fail all the time and either display static or nothing at all.
Samsung knows the failure rates and how they're problematic. Any physical damage on the phone will void your warranty. If it's the tiniest scratch, warranty void. Not kidding. I see Samsung deny them left and right. If you remove the pre-applied screen protector and replace it with your own, warranty void. They literally record how many times they've been dropped. If the count exceeds an acceptable value, warranty void.
In terms of outright failure across all phone brands and models, the flips and folds are #1. Behind that is the A series. But those are cheap so it's expected.
Please purchase insurance for it if you can. It will save you at minimum $400 on a screen repair.
These are all good points and indeed I considered them. I'm curious though, how many 6th gen foldables have you had to repair yet? I know their 4rd gen was the most problematic and 5th, 6th got new hinges again.
There's virtually no improvement. We see a 6th gen at least once a week. That's no different than the 5th gen. I will admit the 4th gen is the least reliable of the last three generations mentioned here.
Every single generation of flip or fold, someone has came in after release day with a dead screen. The issue has always been a result of the hinge damaging the screen. The opening action alone is enough to damage cables or the panel itself.
Because screen replacement involves replacing the entire frame (we transplant the board only), we have to have the correct color frame in stock. If we don't, it's just a matter of whether or not we can order the correct color. And if we can't you're sending it to Samsung. They do not allow us to order the special/exclusive colors.
As a note here: flip and fold models have a battery on each side. If you're unfortunate and have a battery expand on the side that has an outer screen and it cracks, you're replacing the frame and outer screen. The batteries come with the frame. Samsung does not allow individual replacement due to how the batteries are paired.
When are we finally going to get curved phones on some kind of bracer? They wear them in every futuristic movie, we finally have curved screens, and no one’s made one for wearing on your forearm yet.
Didn’t Apple just come out with one or am I mistaken?
I have an iPhone 15 Pro and a recent Pixel (just because I’m a dev and want to know both ecosystems). I use the iPhone as my daily driver, though, not because it’s necessarily better but because I cannot help myself when it comes to tinkering with Android devices. I have semi-bricked several over the years and then had to install Windows in a VM to run some sketchy-looking factory reset program.
Basically, it’s not an Android problem. It’s a me problem. I’m the one who needs a walled garden so I don’t do science experiments.
Good to know that about one's self.
Safari + AdBlock + Vinegar makes for a great YouTube experience.
That said, Freetube on my Pixel is wonderful.
Seriously.
I don't want a tablet in my pocket all day.
I bought my current phone because it was small and the options I had when looking for small phones were extremely limited.
I'm not trying to seriously game on a smartphone. I'm not trying to watch full length movies. It's in my pocket 90% of the time. I want it to be small.
I don't know how you youngsters do it.
One hand eternally glued to this big phone and now they need the other for a soup thermos they suddenly feel the need to drag with them everywhere.
people spend more time on their phones than ever before. its substituted sitting in front of a tv, so i guess people want bigger screens the same way they want bigger tvs.
IDK, i have Big hands, so using those was a pain for me lmao.
Here's my dilemma:
I've thought about buying a model I could jailbreak, but again it's just to use a system that's abusive. "Download our app!", "Use our digital coupons!", "Link your phone number!", "Scan our code!", "Let us track your location for your convenience!".
I'm really a niche subgroup though, I already need other devices while at work that a phone wouldn't suffice for. I kinda see more people going this route though. If your transportation has a computer, then what's the endpoint in carrying a phone? If your job requires digital devices, the phone is basically reduced to a large brick of a communication device. I see more and more equipment being specialized and having added communication aspects for more complicated machinery, cell phones are not going to keep up with it in a general sense.
tldr: cell phones are just a fad with an abusive system that will die out one day and be remembered like rotary phones. They're generally subpar for any specific task and are only a place holder till we figure out better systems.
No, the tiny soft-keyboard on my old Galaxy Xcover is significantly easier to type than any modern phone. Less movement of the finger, easier targeting of the buttons. I'm always surprised anew, each time i dust it off and play with it.
I held on to my iPhone 4S as long as I could. Now I have a 12 "mini". I know I'm in the minority, though, because I don't spend all day staring at my phone. I do like having all the features, but I use them only occasionally--say, once a week or less. I prefer my internet use on my gaming computer with a big monitor, and a full-size keyboard.
I expect I'll end up with a huge phone for my next one, that I don't need, just to keep access to the functionality. Like everything else in life, there's always compromises to be made.
I like big phones (and I can not lie)
My brother despises big phones and cannot tell the truth...
Because people don't buy them.
Maybe because people aren't given a choice as everything is dictated by the manufacturers.
Slapping 10 year old hardware into a phone with a small screen is a guaranteed way to make people not buy your phone but that doesn't mean people don't want small screens, headphone jacks, replaceable batteries, etc. They just don't want the garbage manufacturers lump in with these great features so that these phones don't cut into their high-margin device sales.
You forget that all phones used to be small.
Also all those examples you gave apply to all phones, not just small ones.
Apple sold a 13 Mini, which was nearly identical to the 13, as much as is physically possible, and it was a dud.
I had a 13 mini until a month ago. It's one hell of a phone, and honestly, I'd still be using it if iPhones didn't keep their value so well and Apple weren't such a shit company.
Cool.
I haven't forgotten that. You may have forgotten that all phones came with swappable batteries, small screens, and headphone jacks and they sold millions of them for decades. That proves these are important features because they sold well, right?
What does that even mean? All phones come with old hardware and are poorly built outside of a couple key features?
So identical that they were nearly the same price which could put a lot of buyers off if they feel like they're getting less value for their money. Consumers also think that 1/4lb burgers are better than 1/3lb burgers because they're bigger as A&W found out in the 1980s when trying to compete against McDonalds. "The market deciding" doesn't mean anything rational happened or that it reflects reality. You're simply cherrypicking the result you want and shaping it to fit your argument.
You said people don't have a choice. I'm telling you it used to be the only choice they had. Then OEMs started offering other options and everyone wanted those. No point in making devices the market has proven time and time again that they don't want.
Important to consumers, yes. Important to OEMs? No, quite the opposite. I don't think that applies to screen size.
What did you even mean if not to imply that people weren't buying specifically large phones because they didn't include these anti-features?
Why would they feel like they were getting lass value when it was the size they wanted, and had everything else also?
So then you agree consumers want bigger phones?
Pot meet kettle.
If you believe this then why even argue against us with this "the market decided" BS argument in the first place? You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth and contradicting your previous comments.
I wasn't implying anything. I stated that manufacturers put things like a headphone jack into a phone that seems like it was built by Fisher Price and then point to it's lack of sales and claim "people don't want headphone jacks"
Uh, no, I'm saying that consumers don't always act rationally and make the best decisions which is why "market trends" can't just be taken at face value. 1/4lb is actually smaller than 1/3lb if you weren't aware, but consumers saw the bigger number and thought the smaller burger was the better value even though reality says otherwise.
I'm not, and I explained exactly how I'm not in the section you quoted.
What does any of that have to do with small phones, though? You seem to be implying OEMs have a some sort of agenda against small phones. But why?
Why does that matter? OEMs are not going to continue manufacturing phones that consumers aren't buying because they're irrational. That would, in itself, be irrational.
“Dud” is really strong language. These companies have distorted metrics for what is a successful product.
Google has a reputation for killing products because of similar wild expectations for ROI.
Is it "strong language" when they made up 3% of iphone sales?
Well, Um. There are 3% of us!
My point is I assume they didn’t lose money on them. They feel the scale of profit needs to be higher, else it’s not worth their time. And I think it’s a bummer that they run things this way.
That 3% would be a lot of customers to other reasonably sized companies. Right?
When was the last time a small phone that didn't also focus on being budget friendly and feature-limited hit the market? I don't think this argument holds water since the market hasn't been adequately tested. There are plenty of us lurking in dark corners waiting for a small but powerful phone. We are willing to sacrifice some battery life as that is a physical barrier, but there's really no necessity to skimp on anything else. Eventually an option will present itself, but I agree with the article, the Jetstream is not blowing that direction. I don't anticipate such an option will present anytime soon. All pendulums swing back eventually though.
You forget that the entire market used to be comprised of exclusively "small" phones, and we moved away from that.
The iPhone 13 Mini and ASUS Zenfone, not so long ago.
Shit battery capacity, bloated OS causing worse battery life, and not enough people actually buying them.
Why is the article using diagonal screen size as their measurement for phone size? In that case you could have a phone the exact same size get “bigger” just because bezel sizes have shrunk over the years.
They specifically call out the iPhone SE as a “small phone” that they seem to want. But the newest iPhone, the iPhone 16 is only 6% bigger in width and height. Fractions of an inch larger. I can totally understand why somebody would want a phone with smaller overall dimensions, but why on earth would your metric for an ideal phone be a smaller screen?
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.
Too small, can't phone
If they make the phones smaller they'll have to make the ads smaller too. Can't have that.
I think it's a psychological thing.
Like, while thinking about what kind of phone we want - a small phone sounds pretty good. But when it comes time to buy it, we start comparing phones, and we see some small ones, and some slightly bigger ones, and some really big ones. We tend to go bigger than we'd originally intended because of psychological anchoring effects.
The slightly bigger phone is seen as a slightly better phone. "not too big" we think, as we compare it to some monsters; and the key stats such as screen resolution and battery capacity sound slightly better. So we tend to buy that bigger phone even if it isn't what we actually thought we wanted.
[edit] I should say that I'm saying "we" in a totally generic way. I definitely don't do this myself. I've literally only ever owned smartphone in my life, and it isn't particularly big or flashy. I have an anti-phone attitude.
I'm not gonna lie, as a 6'4" guy, I can't stand small phones. I understand that I'm an outlier though, and wish there were more options to cater to more people.
I'm just waiting for smart watches to get bigger and bigger and eventually lose the strap.
Phones became more frequently used for apps and posting which is a pain on a tiny screen. I built a pi zero powered retro console but actually using the tiny screen of about 3" makes it near impossible to read anything.
I would like to see things return to having replaceable batteries, headphones jacks and maybe slide out keys, but if I have to type and read on the same screen it's awful nice to have some room to work with.
Because small phones have a small viewing area, which is a pain in the ass to see, especially as you get older. Which is why I prefer foldables. The more screen real-estate I can fit in my pocket, the better.
i have a 6a and i think its about the optimal size. not too small, not too big.
by the way, my first post on here... how is this different to reddit?
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.
power usage of screens scales as O(n^2), but battery scales as O(n^3), meaning bigger phones will have better battery life
They can just make them a little thicker, but still usable with one hand.
Really, it's not a technical problem, it's a marketing problem (i.e. not enough demand, unfortunately).
I don’t see why we don’t already have an iPod size device. I just need something for music and if a phone call happens to come in - great! It was so simple then.
I'd like to have no phone at all, I don't like small screens, nor being interrupted. Problem is that phone apps are now almost obligatory for IDs, transport tickets, passes, banking, etc. So I'd just like a phone-receiver (modem) with a sim card on a USB stick that can enable phone-app-stuff via my laptop or tablet. (Yes some tablets have data sim cards, but we still need sms and occasional phone functions for 'verification' etc.). Any suggestions?
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
I’ll continue to carry my iPhone mini since there isn’t a comparable option
Making a small phone is harder than making a big phone.
Bigger screens mean bigger and more obtrusive ads.
I'm convinced this is 90% of the reason right here.
Porn. Next question
Smaller phones do have a place though. I've got a 7-year old son with Type 1 diabetes. We wears a Glucose Monitor that requires a Bluetooth connection to get a reading. He needs to carry a mobile phone for this reason, and because of his size, and the fact that he needs to carry it basically all the time, a smaller phone is best. He does not need a camera, or to browse social media.
We can, there's just less demand for them. Sony was among the last holdouts for small phones with their compact series, but they stopped because they were their worst selling models.
Even Apple stopped selling their small SE model (that was basically iPhone 5 sized) despite it being the cheapest iPhone to get your hands on, because it sold terribly.
Small phones is something the tech community says it cares about, but the market has proven that the average person doesn't care. Same as the headphone jack and microSD slot.
I don't like it either, but phone companies aren't deliberately leaving money on the table. If they thought small phones would sell gangbusters, they'd bring them back.
As long as they don't stop making ones my current size (which is also my navi for my motorcycle), then they can make whatever they wish. I think mine (Pixel 6 Pro) is perfect size.
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.
Even for the government you need apps nowadays. Yes you can try doing things in person but wait times aren't reasonable. I've been trying to get a dumb phone for myself but still find I need a smartphone for specific apps a couple of times a month...
They suck and also the higher capacity batteries take up too much space now.
this is definitely a trade off. batteries are either small, tall, or thick. my phone with a 3" screen is quite bulbous.
I prefer that to it being thin and having like 3 hours of use time though
"thick" phones of the past fit in my pocket just fine.
One thing that annoys me with the market at the moment is that the majority of folding phones available are like small crappy tablets that fold into a large, impractical to carry phones, and not large, very usable phones that fold into something much more compact that is easier to carry..
Ummm we did? My pixel 9 pro is noticably smaller than my pixel 6 pro, much to my delight. Maybe stop buying the XL tablet phones and you'll find they're actually a reasonable size again. So many people in the comments rallying against an issue that isn't even there. You're just being told this is an issue. Do you even check for yourselves?
this right here is the issue, people don't even remember the size smartphone used to be. I've got a phone that's one of the smallest available that still have decent hardware. the screen is still 6.1 inch. your example of a reasonable size is 6.3 inches.
what op and I are actually looking for is something around 5 - 5.3 inches instead, like smartphone used to be. For that size, all that is available today is no-name chinese phones with shit hardware and no support. the big brands are busy selling 6.2 inches as "compact" where it used to be considered phablet size
The "small" P9P is considerably larger than the iPhone 12/13 mini, which is the size OP wants. My mother-in-law has an iPhone 13 mini and it's very small, but nearly as fully-featured as the standard iPhone 13, which is where other manufacturers keep missing the mark.
I miss the times when I found 5" phones big. Now they just seem small because everything else is pushing 7"
people like larger phones because they like social media. For people in developing countries a cell phone is their only personal computer so for them having larger screen more preferable. People just like larger phones. I loath them because I don't have pockets. I could probably live with a dumb phone, but mobile banking, and maps are too useful of a feature for me to live without out. tbh unless your a power user or gamer there really isn't much of a reason to upgrade your cellphone anyway
This is especially an issue for women, who often have more form-fitting clothing that either doesn't have pockets or have very small ones that don't work for phones.
I think that the usual solution for "women carrying things" is that many are gonna carry a purse -- if someone's pre-menopause, they're gonna need pads or tampons anyway, so can put it in there. Problem is that the phone breaks this. Even if women have a purse, women don't always carry their purse all around the office or house or whatever, but don't want to miss calls.
My mother got a fanny pack just for her phone (which isn't even all that large).
At one point in the past, it used to be common for women to wear a bag on a belt accessible through a slit in their skirt.
https://pieceworkmagazine.com/a-brief-history-of-the-pocket-in-womens-fashion/
The shift by women to pants kinda killed that option.
I think that the solution is gonna be some women's clothier figuring out how to make an appealing way of carrying a phone.
Lara Croft runs around with thigh holsters. That way, the carrying system is clearly distinct from the body, doesn't mess with the body silhouette, which I assume is why women don't want male-style large pocket, non-form-fitting clothing. So maybe something like that would work. Dunno how much of a chafing issue that is.
EDIT: Drop bags are kinda in the neighborhood of what I'm thinking of too, though I'm thinking lower-slung and smaller:
Put it on a badge and make it so when you push on it, you say who you want call and it calls them.
Also make the badge the starfleet logo.
So, a smartwatch? Pretty sure someone has made "badge" holders for some models by now, just like you can get a brand new iPod.
Because most people want big screens?
I mean, it is simple.
You can. Even if life can get complicated is entirely doable. Unless you live in like China with mandatory apps.
Thought provoking!
I just want Star Wars style comlink. Wearable on my belt or neck, with a strap in case of dropping it.
Will have to be a bit bigger, to have enough keys. And some display, preferably monochrome text-only.
But in general it should be a device not emitting horrible blue light all the time.
About form - I think something round with keys on the sides is still a good idea.
I'm guessing it's because most women carry their phone in a bag, so the bigger phone isn't inconvenient and has the advantage of the bigger screen.
And I suppose most men prefer the bigger screen size, and they are convenient enough in the available sizes. I use a 6.7 inch, and it fits fine in a pocket for me.
Also note that although we have way bigger screens on modern phones, the bezels are way smaller, on the first smartphones the screen was only about 50% of the front face. So a 10 year old 4 inch phone can be about as big as a new 6 inch.
Phones are already too small. I use a fold because it's the only way I can get a decent sized phone now!
I mean, we are the customers, we choose, personally I went with the iphone 15 pro, because the max is just ridiculous even though I am close to 2 meters tall and have big hands.
If people bought the smaller versions when they are available I am sure phone makers would react
I'm also close to 2m tall and have large-ish hands, but I still prefer smaller phones. They just... don't really exist.
Probably for similar reasons we can't go back to small cars: People are getting older and can't handle them.
ETA: Old people need giant text so they can read things. Big screens show more big text. They also don't want to drop down into a small car, so they buy SUVs and trucks. So they make SUVs and trucks and great big screens for the old people who are most of the population.
Source: I am an old person. Except I drive a small car because it's fun
we can't have small phones because the os design can only be so flexible before it starts either being crap at every size or having so many edge cases that internally it's stupid complex.
having limited sizes means the sizes they do have can be well covered
What edge cases are you referring to? Screen size doesn't matter if the resolution is the same.
it does if you want your buttons to be anything close to the size of your finger, or if you want the text to be readable (which is adjustable, but most people do not)
There are small phones. There's more small phones than big phones. And I have big thumbs so stop whinging about the minority.
Edit: Omg I just lost to clickbait. FUCK.
Umm, you still can buy them
They cost like 10 dollars each man, it's not that difficult