- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- technology@beehaw.org
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You can. Ditch Apple and join us. Plenty of small phone selections here on the other side.
I miss the times when I found 5" phones big. Now they just seem small because everything else is pushing 7"
Bigger screens mean bigger and more obtrusive ads.
I’m convinced this is 90% of the reason right here.
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.
“Why can’t we go back to small phones”
Company releases small phone
“No one” buys it
Company stops making small phones
People complaining why there are no small phones
no one bought it because it was shit. companies do this all the time so they can make more expensive things more cheaply, and force people into buying the most expensive.
I want an easily removable battery. As in, I want to be able to have two batteries, one in my phone and another in a charger and I just swap them once a day. I used to be able to do that, and it was normal. Now, the only phones that have that are either extremely garbage or also feature a barcode scanner and cost as much as a “flagship” device.
@BlueBaggy @corbin as a tiny-handed person, I resent being called “no one”
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 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.
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.
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.
Stock market says brrr
Because most people use their phone as their main, if not only, device, so a bigger screen is more desirable to consume content.
By that logic everyone should buy a foldable
I would, if long term durability is not a concern and the price is not too damn expensive.
Basically if money is no issue.
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.
Answering the phone single-handed sounds like it should be possible on even the largest of phones. No problem for me using a Pixel 9 Pro, although it’s not a very big phone of course.
I second this.
There were benefits to the comically-large form factor, though. Touch keyboards worked significantly better with larger screens,
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.
This is how you know a boomer wrote that 🤣
Feels same for modern UI, everything is just giant these days… I need at least 4k, else I go vomit even on 100% zoom level these days.
Luckily, it is possible to set standard scaling of browsers to 50%…deleted by creator
Yea, 😄 not you are the boomer, the one who thinks writing on larger screen is more easy, is the boomer
I don’t want a small phone or a slide out keyboards.
I want :
Replaceable battery.
Non glass back.
3.5 jack.Galaxy Xcover series.
3.5 jack is easy, most budget phones have them (along with a MicroSD card slot)
The replaceable battery? That’s gonna be hard to find. There the obvious Fairphone, but its very costly for its specs and is only made for EU, and even if someone from the US imports it, the only US carrier allowing it is Tmobile.
Samsung Galaxy XCover series have IP67 Water resistance, headphone jack, and MicroSD card slot, and the replaceable battery, but its specs are not that good for its cost (as reported by various Reddit users).
I wouldn’t trust the water resistance tho. One drop into a puddle and the back comes off exposing the internals.
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.
3.5 jack.
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
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.
“walled garden” - how many 5.4” android phones can you name from the current decade?
I agree, it’s like the author is saying “why this public-market company I trusted blindly is not doing what I (minority) want?”
I think it’s a valid criticism that should be welcomed. You could make this argument for any company when they make a bad decision.
“Oh well you trusted this company blindly so why are you upset and criticizing this design choice you don’t agree with.”
I also am not convinced a criticism is less meaningful if it’s the minority opinion. Many such cases in the world where the minority opinion is proven to be better for the majority.
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.
The truth is though that it’s not an apple-specific thing. On the android side Asus was the last large phone maker to ship modern small phones, and even they have taken over their zenfone line (small phones line) with a large phone for the ZenFone 11.
Based on reports from companies, it sounds like the market is just not there, at least not big enough to warrant the R&D compared to “regular” phones which make them good money.
And it has a flir camera. Not super useful for the masses, but flippin awesome nonetheless
Flip phones with 7 day battery life, including 20 hours of talk time?
I assume that the author specifically wants a smartphone.
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.
Removed by mod
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?
Not to mention: the old people (the ones with money) can’t see them.
How many times is this going to be regurgitated?
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.
