Android @lemdro.id

11mo ago

Small Phones are Dead and We Killed Them

143 comments

As a small phone lover, here's the thing: we don't consume as many phones or as many services as (general) big phone people.
It's not only about the size of the community. It's that our phones are tools generally at our service and not the reverse.
Hopefully Linux phones are not so far away from usable in the next couple years.
- Hopefully Linux phones are not so far away from usable in the next couple years.
  I said the same thing in like 2013. :(
  
  It seemed more likely back then than it does today. Ubuntu and Firefox were both developing mobile OSes around that time.
  What's the closest thing to a viable option nowadays?
  
  RIP Ubuntu Edge
  They got so close to the Kickstart goal
- Linux phones aren't gonna help, the issue is the hardware
- Unfortunately it does not look like as if linux phones would be developing anywhere
- Isn't Android Linux?
  
  Linux is often used to refer to a family of operating systems including Ubuntu, Debian, fedora, red hat, ect., which all use the Linux kernel.
  However, GNU/Linux may be a better name for this family of operating systems, since they all use GNU components and (to varying extents) embrace the philosophy of the free software foundation.
  Android uses the Linux kernel, but not GNU components, and do not embrace the philosophy of the Free software foundation.
  Stalman, the man who founded GNU and the free software foundation published his thoughts on this:
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.en.html
  
  Yeah, but it's not like a typical Linux installation on a PC would be. You can't just install a Flatpak application or anything like that. It doesn't use many of the GNU core utilities that most other Linux distros use, and doesn't use a mainline kernel.
  People that ask for Linux phones know Android is Linux.
  It's just a lot more concise to say than "I want a phone with an open bootloader and hardware fully compatible with a mainline Linux kernel. I want to have a phone that can run a Phosh/Gnome Mobile/Plasma Mobile UI and on the backend work in a similar way to how desktop Linux would."
- Isn't android a Linux fork or am I misremembering?
  
  Linux is a kernel. In that sense Android is Linux.
  However when people say Linux they usually mean the full OS with the GNU utilities and all the other things that make up a Linux distro.
  In that sense, Android is not Linux as pretty much everything other than the kernel is built specifically for android.
  
  It is. My guess is they're referring to one of the other Linux OS initiatives. I have no idea what's currently being made though, as historically if it hasn't been Android or iOS it tends to fail.
- I mean, Android...
  
  Mom: "We have Linux at home"
  Linux at home: Google™ Linux
- I just use foldable phones now. The outer screen width of a Galaxy Fold is the same as an Xperia Z3 Compact and when I use the phone two handed I get the benefit of having a big-ass screen. You just get used to the weight after a while.

Praying the Xperia 5 VI is a bit more compact that the previous iteration. That and Sony actually start supporting their services for at least 5 years -_-
- It probably is if the rumour about them switching to a 19.5:9 resolution is true. It'll still be larger than the S24 and Pixel 8 because of the top and bottom bezel but height should decrease by a couple of mm.
- Yeah, the lack of software support made me disregard the Xperia completely (well and its price), which is sad because it is otherwise a great phone with actual useful features that other manufacturers have removed.
  
  Me too. I don't mind the 21:9 cause to me, at least it has some use (cinema scope) but buying an 800$ phone to get 2 software updates? Nope

I think he means normal sized phones, instead of the 'phablets' we are surrounded by now. I still think the 6.1 inch screen is the perfect size.
- 6.1” is too big. I miss the 4.7-5.1” range that they had on the iPhone Mini for example.
  
  HTC One dimensions: 146.4 x 70.6 x 9.4 mm
  S23 dimensions: 146.3 x 70.9 x 7.6 mm
  You don't account for the MUCH smaller bezels and the different aspect ratio. The phone size is very similar
  
  For me, it's about width, not screen size.
  My current phone is 6.1", but it's only 68mm wide, so it's easy to hold one-handed and slips in & out of my pocket easily. (It's a Sony Xperia 10 V).
  I love everything about this phone except that there's no NA version, so my phone is missing a couple of the cell bands from my service provider. In particular, the wide band, so I don't get great reception in the middle of large buildings.
  Other than that, it's great. Lots of RAM so app swapping is quick, and the battery life is so good I have it set to only ever charge to 80% and I've only dipped down to 20% on very high usage days. My usual usage is 80-50% daily.
  
  Thats a small phone and I agree they are good too. But 6 is a good size imo, plenty of real estate and cant still be used with one hand.
  
  👶
- 6 in phones are in no danger of disappearing though.

MKBHD's video titles are so click baity now
- It's annoying but I get it. If you want to make it or stay big on YT you gotta play the game, and the majority of people eat up click-baity titles and obnoxious thumbnails.
  
  I don't disagree but it's still a shame to see a well established channel needing to go to such lows.

"We"
- I used an iPod touch 4G thru 7G as my 'phone'. WiFi was available enough where I live that it was all I needed. And if I was off in the woods somewhere, I was ok not having service, and the intarwebs instantly answering my every curiosity. I tried to keep it small.

There is at least the Unihertz Jellystar, which is a fairly nice tiny phone. Personally I'm likely stuck with Pixel phones because I'm a big fan of Graphene OS, otherwise I'd likely pick one up after my Pixel 4a fails, which might be awhile, since it's still going strong.
- Never heard of the Jelly Star! $200 bucks?! I just ordered one.
  
  Fucking awesome phone. Been my daily driver for a week now.
  Typing is horrible, tough, and for anything serious (browsing, streaming...) you will want a bigger screen and general more build quality. Camera, sound quality, screen are all screaming low end.
  Super fast charging because the battery is tiny, sill good SOT because the screen is tiny too.
  Feels damn good to be able to use and hold your phone one handed in almost any orientation you can hold your arm in.
  Keyboard: AnySoftKey and a Compact layout (2 keys, 1 button) is very helpful.
  
  Oh, cool! Hope you like it dude :)
- Holy shit, That thing is absolutely TINY
  Almost too tiny for me…
  4.5 - 5.5 would probably be the sweetspot for me.

The death of small phones is why I'm so committed to my flip 4. The space it takes up in my pocket or bag is so much less than any "regular" phone.
- Pocket space is only half the problem. The other half is one-handed use and the flip is huge when opened.
  
  This is true, and honestly my biggest gripe with the phone. I don't wear small mitts, and I can only comfortably reach 3/4 of the way up the phone. This is exacerbated by the fact that phone application design is in a very top-centric stage right now. I wonder if there's a way I could extend the android nav bar to take up the top 1/4 of the screen...
  
  I know it's not everyones cup of tea but..
  I ended up buying a Pixel Fold for the Fold aspect. There's an added benefit that it's really short when folded so I can reach the entire screen one handed. It's heavier and thicker than a slate phone, but I actually enjoy the folded experience way better than other phones.

I'd kill for a sub-6" phone with a physical telephoto lens.

Because there is no demand, display manufacturers don't produce small phone displays anymore. And because there's no small display in stock, phone manufacturers have given up on producing small smartphones. Technically, you can contract the display manufacturers to restart production of small phone displays, but no one seems to be interested in taking the upfront risk.

Haven't watched the video but he is one of the reasons and a strong one. He has really big hands and has been pushing flagship devices since forever.
- I have really big hands too, and even with those, really big phone sizes are just not practical, IMHO. Unless one has giant NBA player tennis racket sized hands, past 6” to 6.2”, you just can’t comfortably hold your phone and reach every part of the screen without shifting it around all the time.
  
  I have pretty small hands and I use a 6.7" phone with no trouble. (As a size reference, I can comfortably reach the frets on a 3/4 size electric bass or a guitar, but a full size electric bass is too big for me and I can't play without moving my hand a lot more than you're supposed to.)

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S line:

Seriously, the Zenfone 10 and S24 have the same size in practice. I don't know what the hell he's talking about.
- did you watch the video, basically the next Zenfone is a ROG phone lite.
  and i say this as a ZF9 user.
  
  Yes, but we still have the S line. So I don't know about this whole "small flagship is dead" thing.

I definitely think Apple and Samsung can do a smaller premium phone if they want to as Apple makes the lion's share of profits in the industry and Samsung is the only other manufacturer that makes a significant amount of profit. Heck Samsung can probably do a smaller midrange phone as well. I do not think it makes sense for other manufacturers as they make 3% profit and targeting a very vocal but demanding minority isn't going to help them improve that.
Small phone users should also temper their expectation, I saw a lot of comments from people saying they didn't get the iPhone mini because they expected the Pro Max's specs in the mini form factor. They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn't feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor. Increasing the thickness might help with the battery but that's about the only component that benefits with an increase in one dimension.
- They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn't feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor.
  Not... Really... Sure it makes some difference, but the much more constraining factor is the money. Cameras arent that big, but they're one of the priciest pieces of hardware in the device.
  The problem is more that they keep trying to sell small phones at cheaper price points. So they end up with much worse screens, socs, and cameras so they perform like shit. People don't want a small phone because they don't care about their phone. People want small phones because the standard size is fucking huge. They need to make a high-ish tier small phone instead of low tier small phone that performs like the 50 Walmart shit.
  
  Not... Really... Sure it makes some difference, but the much more constraining factor is the money. Cameras arent that big, but they're one of the priciest pieces of hardware in the device.
  There's isn't enough physical space for three sensors on a smaller phone especially if it's the size of the iPhone mini. They can fit them on a 6.1-6.2 inch device, that's why the S24 and iPhone 15 Pro have them. However the 16 Pro is supposedly getting larger because it's getting a larger sensor for 5x optical zoom. If you look at a periscope lens, it needs a substantial amount of extra width as well. A teardown of any recent flagship reveals that camera modules occupy more space than they did if you look at tearsowns from three or four years back. This makes sense because the sensor itself is increasing in size and the size needs to go up both length and width wise to maintain the aspect ratio of the sensor. Heck in some cases like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and Oppo Find X7 Ultra, the camera modules occupy more space than the rest of the motherboard.
  The problem is more that they keep trying to sell small phones at cheaper price points.
  The iPhone mini was cheaper but it had pretty much the same specs as the regular iPhone except for wireless charging speed iirc. Sales were much lower than the regular model despite that (around or less than 5% of total iPhone 12 and 13 sales). If Apple couldn't make a smaller phone sell particularly well, I doubt anyone else could.
- The S23 and S24 are solid phones at a regular size. So Samsung already do normal sized flagships. It's the mid-low range that is lacking, they are all oversized in that price range, so people don't have much choice but to buy an oversized phone.
  
  Yeah they're regular sized, you could consider the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro as regular sized as well. I think they could probably do a smaller phone about the size of the iPhone 12/13 mini as well if they wanted to. However I'm not sure if they'll do it since the S22 is their smallest phones since the S10e and they haven't gone smaller than that unless you go all the way back to the S4 (which itself has a similar width to the S10e). I understand why they wouldn't do it because it seems the people who want an iPhone 5S to iPhone mini sized phone are extremely vocal but that doesn't seem to translate to numbers in real life.

I hate small phones. I switched back to an iphone SE years ago and realized it was a pita to use anymore. Everything is.. too small.

It started as a hardware problem and doesn't seem to be slowing down. LTE needed more and larger antennae for lower frequencies than older tech. Four cellular antennae are now pretty standard. Then you have wifi, Bluetooth (which can share if they can TDM), wireless charging, NFC, ultra wideband, GNSS. Then the chips are so powerful they need heat dissipation systems installed (or just lame thermal throttling like what Apple does.)
The modems require more power, (especially at the beginning of LTE) which means bigger batteries. LTE and NR have reduced range compared to the older narrowband technologies, so the phone needs to use more power to transmit, especially when carriers like Verizon didn't backfill cell sites to compensate for the reduced coverage.
Then, cameras, one wasn't enough, 4 or 5 are very common now (usually 3 primary and depth or low res sensors for aiming.)
When tablets became popular, many people decided to just have a large phone screen rather than a tablet, further entrenching the size.
The tech is more mature now, a 2-antenna MIMO antenna for cellular would suffice, albeit at the expense of network performance. Likewise one camera with a depth sensor would work, although mobile photography would be more limited. Dropping some limited-use items like wireless charging and ultra wideband could further shrink space.
So it would be possible now, but as others here have mentioned, the supply side focuses on larger hardware.
Ironically, at this point I'd almost prefer a smart watch with LTE and stop carrying a phone altogether. However, the aforementioned antenna issue makes it so watches generally have poor to unusable signal, poor battery life in cellular mode, no camera, and the 5G NR low power spec/chips aren't fully done yet, so it's LTE only on them, which, with carriers transitioning to 5G will make it so watches can only access a handful of congested bands.
Also, that device manufacturers tend to design smart watches to be companion devices to a smartphone rather than primary makes that concept's execution problematic.
Another idea I had that was anti small phone but huge battery boost was to just bring a backpack or a satchel or whatever. Carry a full sized tablet around, and use a Bluetooth headset for calls. However, tablets are also often crippled by carriers/manufacturers so they can't do common things like SMS or voice calls, and Apple has basically monopolized that market.

Bigger screens make it easier to use as my main computer, thank you.
- I couldn't resist. I'm sorry
  
  BIG
  
  Dom Joly moment

I actually think the opposite is true as well. Phones these days mostly exist between 6.2 and 6.8". We don't actually have any huge phones as like the Galaxy Mega 6.3 (which with modern 19:9 aspect ratio screens and smaller bezels would be more like 7.5") don't exist either

I used to like small phones. I thought the form factor of my erstwhile iPhone 5 was perfect.
But then I got older, and my eyesight got worse. Reading small fonts on small screens is becoming increasingly difficult, but I'm not yet at the point where I have to wear glasses or contacts all the time. I also don't like just increasing font sizes, as I lose screen realestate. So I'm kinda starting to see why some people like phones with bigger screens.

I don't get why you'd want a smaller phone unless you're looking to get one in a flip-phone style form factor. I'd be down for that. I miss being able to accurately text from my pocket.
- I don’t get why you’d want a smaller phone
  Being able to hold the phone comfortably and securely in your hand is really important for me. I'd love to be able to reach the vast majority of the screen without having to shuffle the phone in my hand or use two hands. I very rarely watch any videos on my phone, or play any games that require a large screen.
  My wifes iPhone 12 Mini is a perfect size.
  
  One-handed mode exists if you need to reach the whole area of the interface with one hand, albeit it won't help if grip is an issue. Maybe a pop socket kinda thing for that?
- Because I don't want this giant thing in my pocket that's also hard to hold, let alone use one handed.
  
  Using one handed isn't really an issue if you toggle the one-handed mode...
- Have you heard of women? Or maybe teenagers with not-so-large hands?
  
  Most larger phones have a single-hand mode that gives you kind of a picture-in-picture of the screen itself.
- Galaxy S3 was comfortable to chat and surf. One or two words less per line but it fit in your pocket and your hand didn't get tired from the weight.
  
  I went S2 -> S5 -> S8+ -> Note 10+ -> S23 Ultra
  Never really felt my phone was too big, though there are times where I've got a show to go to and wish I had a cheap flip phone to fall back on. The older phones seemed fine at the time until I realized how much better the bigger screens were. I'm not sure I'd want one bigger than the S23 Ultra, unless it folded out to a tablet.

I just went phone shopping not too long ago and had the opposite experience. Bigger phones are way harder to find now. Where the hell are the 6 or 7 inchers? 😩
- That's what she said... sighs

A small phone is useless unless your only goal with it is receiving calls. Even making calls on a small phone is difficult, never mind using the Internet. And losing a larger one still happens, a small one would just disappear like a sock in the dryer.
- Sure, there are times when having a bigger phone makes sense, but it hurts a whole lot less when I'm in bed watching something and i drop it on my face.
  
  Have you tried not doing that?
- Why would any of these things be worse with a 4.5" screen? My eyesight is fine.
  
  Navigation.
- A small phone is fine to take photo/video, send messages, make calls, view video content, and play games. Any other use case is more appropriate for another device.
- With one exception, I've only had phone that would be classed as small by today's standards for the past ten years, the largest being a Pixel 4a and the smallest being a Sony X Compact. I preferred the size of the Sony.
  I rarely make voice calls. I use my phone for messaging, light web browsing, notes, reading, watching videos, podcasts, navigation, occasional gaming, and photography when I've made the mistake of leaving the house without my real camera. I prefer smaller phones because they're easier to use one-handed.
  That one exception is a Pixel 3a XL with a broken cellular modem I bought at a low price to test ROMs and mount on the handlebars of my bike where the vibration is likely to damage the camera. I do occasionally use it for media (video and books) where the larger screen is an advantage, but I would dislike carrying it in my pocket or using it for most tasks where I would have to use both hands.

143 comments