Comment by pclowes
9 months ago
My cynical take is that small phones don't exist because they are not the product. Similar to vape pens the product is the addictive substance the device loads. In this case its apps and ads. A smaller screen probably negatively impacts KPIs on many levels, at Google/Apple/Meta/X and on down through the ecosystem.
I understand that Apple did not make enough money to make it worth their while to continue the iphone mini line. However, it does seem like there is a profitable business for someone there given how beloved it was/is.
I only traded out my iphone 12 mini just recently for an iphone 16 pro (likely the last apple product I will ever buy but thats another story) and aside from the camera it is basically the same. Just heavier, awkward to hold and slightly worse designed.
No major player wants a smaller screen because it has downstream impacts on the pipeline of addictive material and ad pixels they can stuff into ocular nerves.
What was so odd was how Apple fumbled the iPhone mini launch by launching the iPhone SE first. At that point there hadn't been a small phone for a few years, There was pent up demand. The SE came out and it was a big success, lots of people wanted ti because it was a small phone.
Then few months later they launched the mini expecting it to sell even more or something. Somehow they missed that everyone that wanted a small phone had just bought the SE, and it just wasn't long enough for them to be worth upgrading to the much better mini.
Had they waited for a year to pass the mini might have done much better because those who wanted a more powerful phone could find an excuse for an upgrade after a year, less then 6 months, not so much.
This is my take as well. I bought the SE 2nd gen because of its size, a longer support cycle, and granular app permissions on iOS. It was my first iPhone and has probably been my last when its time is due.
My phone isn't some entertainment device, it's a utility tool. I don't need it to be "smart", it should be useful on the go. The persona sketched by GP just isn't me: Messaging, maps, weather, 2FA, and calculator come first, email (read only) and news feed second, the camera is a third for documenting purposes (if even, I'd rather take my full frame). The easier it is to carry this thing around and the longer lasting its build quality, the better. Why would I pay almost double (USD 699 VS 399 on launch) for a less robust mini with sharper edges?!
If Apple were to continue the offer of rehashed designs from previous generations (preferably with rounder edges) for a SE line, limit its dimensions to never go beyond 140x67.5x8mm, and make it last for solid 5-year release cycles, then count me in as your most loyal customer. As it currently stands I'm looking out for a small sized phone from any manufacturer. I would even lower my expectations on support cycle and build quality quite a bit (if reasonable priced) before I'd give in on the size.
I've been an iPhone user since late 2007. I current use an SE 2022 and love it.
I've gone iPhone -> 3GS -> 4 -> 5s -> 6s -> 7 -> SE 2020 -> SE 2022.
The Mini never interested me. I love the SE. I love the home button and TouchID. I love the traditional size. If I want more I have an iPad Pro (12.9" original 2015 model bought in 2015 -- the battery still lasts 2 weeks with my usage pattern) or M1 Mac Mini with a 32" 4k screen.
If they don't make a new SE model I don't know what I'll do. I guess, firstly, get a new battery for it before it's out of the support window. Maybe sometime next year. And then see how long app updates support whatever the last OS version it will run is.
The ONLY thing I'd change in my SE, if it was possible, is more than 4 GB of RAM. The latest models have 8 GB and the others at the time the SE was sold already had 6 GB.
With recent system updates I'm getting a lot more of applications restarting when I switch back to them. This is mostly not a huge problem, except that the X app loses your place in the "Following" stream if you're more than a few hours behind and the app reloads.
I'm still using a 13 mini, it's fractionally too large, I think the original SE is perfection.
Regardless, battery life is horrendous now, and it's starting to lag and fail so when the new ultra watch is released I'm going to replace my phone with it.
Getting the battery replaced fixed mine (and seemed to mildly improve system performance, although maybe that’s placebo), might be worth a shot if you like the form factor.
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Same here. Stuck with SE2 till it stopped catching pokemon properly. Currently pleased with the iPhone 13 mini. I think part of why I like small phones is I carry a laptop and hate web browsing / typing on the phone. It's mostly a modem and camera for me.
Also having a laptop means the battery doesn't matter that much as you can just charge it off that.
I still use my first gen SE and have had the battery replaced once.
That makes sense.
I love my iPhone 13 Mini. Its only issues are battery life (now), and non-competitive camera. I'm personally happy with the photos it takes, but then I look at my girlfriend's shots and get FOMO.
While I doubt it's economical, I'd love a small, simple phone with juiced up camera. I'd be fine with worse battery life as external batteries can remedy that in a pinch.
I have a 12 mini, it's about as large a phone as I'd want. I wish the back and/or bezel were a little "grippier" as the phone as it's made is so slippery it almost demands a case, but that adds bulk.
Unlike many it seems, I don't care much about the camera. I'd probably want some sort of camera for scanning QR codes, or snapping a quick photo of something I want to look up later, but otherwise I don't take photos or videos on my phone. I don't use any social media on my phone other than text messaging. This makes the smaller battery size/capacity a non-issue.
Since Apple no longer makes a reasonably-sized phone I'll probably go back to Android after this one dies or becomes unsupported.
I also think it's silly to carry a $1,000 device around with you everywhere, so a "premium" small phone is probably a non-starter for me. My favorite phones were the ~$200 Moto-G phones I had before I got the iPhone (it was a gift).
I wish they made it thicker. It could easily fit better cameras and a bigger battery.
I don't know. I think the SE was there there to generate services income (Apps, Apple Music, etc.) from people who wouldn't buy an iPhone otherwise. The design was intentionally very stale to avoid cannibalization of their flagships. I don't think a lot of people who bought flagship iPhones before would go to an SE. Imagine going from an iPhone X or XS to an SE, it's a big downgrade. People were not buying the SE because of the size, but because it was cheap (the iPhone 16e that is the cheaper model now, has the same size as the 16).
My wife, I, and several people I know had iPhone 12 or 13 Mini. Their battery life was pretty terrible and word soon got out it was. I think this was in the end what killed it for people who are normally buying Apple flagships and were considering a Mini. It was very hard to get through the day with a Mini.
Besides the abysmal battery life, I think the market for small phones is maybe simply not there. Samsung keeps around one smaller model (base S-series) and arguably the Z Flip is a smaller model (but persistent hardware issues). If there was a large demand for flagship-class small phones, I am sure some Android manufacturers would make them.
They could have made the SE large but slow (instead of small and slow) and avoided all cannibalization future and present.
My hypothesis about the supposed non-existence of the small phone buyer is that they very much do exist (personally, haven't bought anything other than whatever was the smallest Xperia at the time in more than a decade), but that this group has little overlap with the group willing to buy for list price on release day. But the perception of success of a given phone is very much dominated by the latter, the long tail of buyers isn't really seen. Even if the release day premium over mid-lifecycle street price (in countries where price fixing is not allowed) goes to the retailer and is of very little interest to the manufacturer.
Manufacturers should just move compacts to a three year cycle and forget everything about hyper-optimizing desirability for the kind of buyer who spends too much time reading questionable review sites.
I’ve never had battery issues with my mini. But then again, I just want an unobtrusive tool. You can make a lot more money selling phones that are targeted to compulsive/addictive “whales” than you make selling normal phones for normal people.
Your theory makes sense until it falls apart if you consider SE and Mini as the same category of small iPhones. If the only reason why Mini failed was bad launch time, then why haven't Apple launched anything small (SE or Mini) after 2022? Isn't 2024 or even 2025 the perfect time to launch an upgrade for SE or Mini? They now have enough data since the last launch of a small phone.
iPhone SE 1st gen 2016 (Discontinued 2018)
iPhone 12 Mini 2020 (Discontinued 2022)
iPhone SE 2nd gen 2020 (Discontinued 2022)
iPhone 13 Mini 2021 (Discontinued 2023)
iPhone SE 3rd gen 2022 (Discontinued 2025)
The problem is that people who want a small phone prioritize the size.
Most of them don't care about the premium features of larger phones. So the Mini was a weird niche within a niche. Small phone with premium price and features.
The Mini and SE2 were virtually identical in physical size. For the 16e they should have used the iPhone 12/13 Mini body and the 13 Mini screen. Use the 15 Pro SoC with 8GB memory, and the 15 camera. Sell it for an SE price. Now you have fused the small phone and budget iPhone markets.
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I can confirm, that Apple my misunderstood the market: I was eager to buy a new iPhone because I just finished my masters degree and started a new job, had a bit of money and than the SE2 launched. My 5s or SE1 started to age and as an beginner app developer a current phone was important. I was so happy because I could not see my self using one of those bigger phones even though the SE2 was still bigger than my 5s/SE1. A few months later the mini was released and my initial reaction was "OMG this is THE perfect phone, but I just got a new one... i can not afford to buy another one".
The iPhone 13 mini had even worse performance than the iPhone 12 mini even though it wasn't released alongside an SE.
This is so true. I switch from iPhone 5s to iPhone SE to iPhone 13 mini. After my current phone dies I don't know what phone would I get next.
You’re way too cynical and have let your cynicism cloud history.
The first phablets were probably the Galaxy Note line starting in 2011 which was met with some skepticism due to the size of them. These were well before the edge to edge screen days. So you had 5.7 inch screens with a bezel.
They were huge but I would routinely see small women pull these things out of their hand bags and press a device that obscured almost their whole face and start chatting.
Things steadily got bigger from there. The general population WANTED this.
Parent's take is not whether bigger phones shouldn't exist, it's why smaller phones stopped being produced, which is a fairly different angle.
> women
To note, the initial smartphones were already too big for he taste of many: a clamshell feature phone was almost a third of the size of the original iPhone. From that POV, going to a phone that is twice as big is less of a barrier, as they had to keep it in a bag/purse in the first place.
The return of foldables is also pretty well received in that regard.
Just tonight, I saw a friend of mine, pull a new foldable Razr from her purse.
They are cool phones, but I do iOS. I still use a 13 Mini, and will continue to do so, for quite some time.
As to the point of this article, I seem to recall a couple of very small Android phones, some years ago (about credit-card sized). I guess they didn’t sell well.
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The general population wants larger phones because they are addicted to their screens.
Apple did a horrible job marketing the mini. I ran into a lot of people who saw my 12 mini and said they would prefer that size, but didn’t know it existed.
When I went to buy it, and the case, the employees at the Apple Store questioned me and tried to push me toward the normal iPhone. This is the first and only time I’ve ever felt Apple Store employees steering purchasing decisions. I had to go in there knowing what I wanted, and had to assert that it was what I wanted repeatedly.
Are people buying big phones because they are addicted to their screens, or are people addicted to their screens because of big phones?
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Yes, and people are using their phones for what they previously used TVs, laptops, music players and other dedicated devices for. It's a bit of a cycle.
There's also the accessibility factor. Many people become farsighted later in life. It's much easier to see things on a big phone, especially with increased zoom. (I see this all of the time when I fly.)
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The other problem is that more and more content now is designed for (or only tolerable on) larger phone screens. Go to any website these days on a smaller phone like an iPhone mini and more than 50% (being charitable here) of the screen will be taken up by garbage like ads, cookie banners, popups, etc.
It's a vicious cycle. Phone manufactures make the screen bigger, app and website developers realize they can cram more junk on the page, consumers demand larger screens as a result, return to step 1.
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I want larger phones because I am at that particular stage of middle age where I should probably start using reading glasses, but I'm also damned if I'm going to start carrying reading glasses everywhere with me.
Larger screen = easier life.
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> The general population wants larger phones because they are addicted to their screens.
I would rephrase that to: The general population wants a larger phones because phones are defacto PCs these days. They can watch movies, browser the news, listen to music, FaceTime, Maps, ..
Outside of business applications likes Word / Excel, phones basically handles 90% of people's requirements for "computers".
I want larger monitors, laptops, tablets and phones because I can't f**ing see well. Book reading is a real strain on small screens.
For most people the phone is their only computer. Who bring laptop to a friend group hangout anymore ? Only the techies.
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Advertisers supports bigger screen for bigger space for their ads.
I just want a decently large screen because I have old eyes. A 6.1” phone works fine for me.
Yeah and I also remember how Apple fans said "this is ridiculous, nobody needs a screen that big that doesn't fit in your pocket easily", and here we are 15 years later mourning the iPhone Mini/SE.
10 years ago, if your phone was bigger than 5 inches, it looked ridiculous. You'd pull it out and people would look at you like you'd just escaped from a nut house
The Pro (non-Max) feels like my sweet spot. Fits in most pockets pretty easily but Max is just too big for me.
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I just refuse to accept that the first phablet I ever saw, the Galaxy Note, which covered the person's face and looked absolutely comical in their hands, was smaller than my current, very regular-sized phone.
That's because it's not smaller, it has a larger front face area and volume.
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How big is your phone? If it want for edge to edge screens, I’d have stuck with my iPhone SE longer.
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>Things steadily got bigger from there. The general population WANTED this.
Easy to say if the only devices are big phones. There is no choice.
The Samsung Galaxy Note (the first one) had a screen size of 5.3 inches.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 had a screen size of 5.5 inches. I had one and regularly had strangers ask me if that was really a phone. I had friends say, "Give me a call on your tablet" as a joke.
I loved it. Now my 6.1 inch iPhone feels on the small side.
This. I'm also had several Note's. I even would like now also to have a bigger phone again. But it seems nobody does 8" or 9" phones.
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The Dell Streak (shoutout to the other 3 people who bought one) had a 5 inch screen in 2010, a notable jump from contemporary phones like the iPhone 4 which was still 3.5", and other Android devices like the HTC Droid series which were around 3.7" and slowly starting to creep upwards to differentiate themselves from the iPhone. I think the largest Android devices you could get at the time were still smaller than 4".
I remember Dell showing this off at the All Thing D conference and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal asked the Dell spokesperson to put it up to his head, and told him it looked like a waffle. To this days it’s all I think of when I see someone holding a massive phone up to the side of their head.
That thing could really stand out in a crowd. I was at a baseball stadium for a concert that year, and spotted someone with a Dell Streak as I was heading down to the field. In a sea of people that was the one phone I spotted. I stopped to ask the guy about it briefly.
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It's amusing how people try an memory hole their negative reaction and pieces written about the Note. People's mocking web pages have disappeared. Arguments based on the size of the human hand completely forgotten. The very notion that a 5.7 inch screen is big an unwieldly is now met with disdain.
When I first saw the ad on tv, my reaction was "Holy moley, wow, who's going to buy that monstrosity?"
And then a few weeks later I bought one. All the guys in my office laughed and said "Wow, look at that huge thing, it's ridiculous". I chuckled and agreed, though I was quietly enjoying the larger screen.
And now everyone's using them.
Smaller phones has always been limited in performance, batter life, the app support and the camera quality. Camera is the most important factor and battery is the second.
General population doesn't buy phones every year and they don't want a nerfed phone when they have to pay 500-1000 $/€s. So they gravitate towards higher end ones.
Companies including Apple has always treated the small size as an entry to mid segment phone. The only exception I know is Sony z3 and z5 compact which suffered heat and battery swelling issues due to Qualcomm messing 810 series SoCs up.
Companies also want you to buy the most expensive phone. So they market the premium models and train their store personnel to sell more of the premium line. If they stop intentionally nerfing the smaller phones, I think there is a market there. However, it will still be smaller.
I used to lug a dedicated camera around all the time. Except for special purposes I just bring a phone these days. And I'm not the only one. I do know people who do a lot of nature photography but I also know people who always had a camera with them who now reserve them for "serious" portraiture and things like that.
At least the smaller battery is offset by the smaller screen
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This is the part that frustrates me. Apple keeps introducing software “solutions” for hardware problems. Reachability, Screen Time, Focus Modes, etc. A smaller phone naturally solves most of these problems. Small phones act as more of a utility device for when you’re away from a proper computer. This is all I want my phone to be. I really think they got it right the first time in 2007.
I ended up switching from a 13 mini (I had the 12 mini as well) to a 16 Pro. I was having a lot of battery life issues, and kept running into apps that clearly didn’t fully test with the smaller screen. I also really missed having a telephoto lens.
My phone usage went up; my laptop/desktop usage went down. I don’t like that. Compared to a normal computer, a phone is still worse in almost every way, other than mobility. It’s just now tolerable enough to put up with more of the time. I’m writing this on the phone, it would have been easier on a keyboard and mouse.
"Small phones act as more of a utility device for when you’re away from a proper computer. This is all I want my phone to be."
You, like me, are not representatives of a market phone manufacturers are interested in. Utilitarian and minimal use only sells one phone every few years.
They are catering for the overwhelming market that spends upwards of 5 hours screen time per day, watches movies and TVs, plays games, and generally spends as much time as possible on them, with as much payment and ad revenue as that comes with on top of the original device sale.
I always personally liked the idea of computers being fixed, or semi-fixed (like a laptop), as a place to work or study, and then leave once that is done. The replacement of computers and laptops by tablets and phones is a wider cultural shift from computers being tools and productive technology to entertainment and consumerist technology, in my opinion.
Maybe you can use vinyl tape to mask out the borders of your phone? At least you will be using it less for tasks that work better on a big screen.
You could take the 13 mini to Apple and swap out the battery for a new one? That might solve some of the battery issues
This was the internal debate I was having with myself. I bought the 13 mini the day the 14 was released and saw they were killing the mini line. The goal was to keep it until it was literally dead, replacing the battery as needed. The battery of the 13 mini was supposed to be better than the 12 mini, but that was not my experience.
The battery also wasn’t the main issue, just a contributing factor. I was ok using the battery as a signal for when I was using the phone too much and taking it as a signal to reevaluate my usage. Seeing software bugs related to the screen size, as figuring that would only get worse now that new phones didn’t come in the smaller size… that’s what made me think I might as well get the transition over with.
I’ve had battery issues with the 16 Pro, but those are software bugs. Some days my phone will give me a low battery warning by noon. I end up killing all the apps, charging it up again, and then it’s fine. It’s happened about 4 or 5 times, but I haven’t been able to tell what’s doing it.
The 13 mini didn't solve any of these issues for me plus the worse battery life. I upgraded to 16 pro max. My laptop usage also went down from there. Total screen time probably stayed, but now i carry most of the time just a phone instead of phone and laptop. If you want something less addictive there is probably the apple watch but you still need the phone to configure and now you're strapped to a device 24/7 just for the sake to be used less.
>No major player wants a smaller screen because it has downstream impacts on the pipeline of addictive material and ad pixels they can stuff into ocular nerves.
There are lots of phone manufacturers who have no ads business. They just make phones so why would they care?
Size is dictated by trouser pocket size/handbag size and usage. Editing photos and movies to upload onto social media is probably better on a big screen.
Also screen size is dictated by common panel sizes, as low volume will mean a higher price.
Folding screens and iPad Mini's existence suggests people want larger screen real estate.
I think photos are a big deal, but IMO it's more about the photo quality. And if you put a nice fancy camera on the phone, suddenly the device gets pretty expensive.
And so while there are people who want "small screen + nice camera". There are people who want "small screen + small price". There are many people who _don't want the small screen_. So you have this phone that can cost a lot of money (in a pretty messy market where most phone models seem to not make money anyways), and you're going to cut off chunks of the market?
So we end up with small screen + shitty camera and specs etc. And people here who want a small phone (but really want a small phone that isn't miserable to use) still are unsatisfied.
I have an iPhone mini, and my understanding is that I lose quite a bit of battery life also by not having the full sized version. The market definitely prefers long runtimes, free from frequent charging, while I need to carry a charge pack sometimes, although just when I expect it to be needed.
> There are lots of phone manufacturers who have no ads business. They just make phones so why would they care?
There are still bound to the screen resolution dictated by the platforms/environment. A maker selling an android phone with a 480x640px screen would face a huge uphill battle to see any sales.
Going for a smaller physical screen means higher DPI, so higher production costs and quality control issues. It can make more sense to buy cheaper, low DPI screen and make the whole device bigger to match the needed pixel count.
> There are lots of phone manufacturers who have no ads business.
I mean... none of the big ones.
For the others, they DO make small phones, and even non-addictive phones. We have e-ink phones in pure black and white.
Agreed. I'd prefer a modern iPhone the size of an iPhone 4, it was perfegt. I made the same "upgrade" from 12 mini to 16 Pro, and the 16 Pro is so large and heavy. Feels like we're moving backwards in time.
2026 iPhone Fold is rumored iPhone Mini size unfolding to iPad Mini size.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/04/28/iphone-18-fold-details-launch...
Folding phones don't solve the problem of oversized phones, which is that they are awkward and cumbersome to use.
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It's not iPhone mini sized, the outer screen is wider than even a Pro Max, and it will likely be heavier than a Pro.
See here for dimensions and mockups: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rumoured-iphone-fold-si...
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I hope they instead (or also) make a flip version opening up to at most the size of a regular iPhone.
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The margins are also worse, which is way, way closer to a manufacturer’s bottom line than the software ecosystem.
There is demand for larger phones, yes, but manufacturers also charge more for bigger devices and most of that is margin. Following their own logic, they also charge less for smaller phones.
If your customers are sticky, then many of the people who buy the smaller phone would have otherwise bought a bigger phone for more money. Introducing a smaller phone brings down profits.
>manufacturers also charge more for bigger devices and most of that is margin.
Why do they do that though? Usually more compact, high end devices would be more expensive than bulkier one. When has this trend reversed?
Bigger equals better consumer perception, I imagine driven in part by the top-tier phones being larger to fit additional battery capacity in for the higher performance processors making all larger devices carry some premium cachet.
> I only traded out my iphone 12 mini just recently for an iphone 16 pro (likely the last apple product I will ever buy but thats another story) and aside from the camera it is basically the same. Just heavier, awkward to hold and slightly worse designed.
Just did the exact same thing 5 months ago.. I still miss my 12 mini. Would strongly consider buying a 13 mini instead of its even being sold anymore.
i have a 13 mini. Its beat up, battery life is getting worse (even though I rarely use it) and both cameras are smashed (in my pocket during a motorcycle accident), but I look at all the options now and figure I'll just keep using this one. I'd rather be using an iPhone 4, but I need some stuff that that one didn't have to work with a glucose monitor.
I wish they had made a pro mini. The only reason I got rid of mine was for the zoom of the pro.
The main reason I traded was that work pays for a new phone and the battery was so bad I had to charge my 4 year old 12 mini twice a day.
I ended up replacing my 12 mini with a 6z flip from samsung. The only real annoyance is that Apple hasn't enabled RCS for Danish telecom companies yet. Well that and sand... We'll see how long it lives though. The reason I originally went to apple was because my first smartphone (a galaxy 2) sort of did the planned obsolescence thing exactly the same way my two buddies galaxy 2's did at the time. If the flip lives for 5ish years then I'll likely never go back to apple. Unless they make a phone that will actually fit comfortable in my pockets again.
The little half screen on the flip is useless though. Basically nothing works on it.
Funny you should mention this because disposable smartphone vapes are now being sold:
https://www.vapezilla.com/collections/smart-vape-phone
Amazing. If someone had pitched this concept to the producers of "Idiocracy" they would have rejected it as too far fetched and ludicrous.
I'd say the same goes for the removal of FM Radios from mainstream phones.
FM radio uses the headphone cable as an antenna, so with the move to bluetooth I assume it got squashed for similar reasons. The other aspect is it assumes if you want live radio that you're happy needing an active data connection and allowance, any any local stations have a stream available. One of the things I love about streaming (via RadioDroid, etc) is that you can get a station from anywhere on the planet but sometimes you want something a bit more basic.
> FM radio uses the headphone cable as an antenna, so with the move to bluetooth I assume it got squashed for similar reasons.
Some may prefer Bluetooth headphones, and there are countless apologists who now retroactively parrot the manufacturers' excuses for why headphone jacks were eliminated, but it wasn't something the _users_ asked for or wanted.
"Oh, but phones are waterproof now," they claim! Well, so was the Samsung Galaxy S5 I bought in 2014. And by the way, it also had a user-removable battery, removable storage, an FM radio, and an IR blaster. All these years later, you can't find a new phone with all of those features and it's very difficult to find a flagship phone with even _one_ of them.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-hidde...
Yes, the iPhone is basically a vending machine in your pocket. Owned and run by Apple. But you paid for it. Quite smart, actually.
Just like 16e, Mini and SE were meant to push up the sales of their "other" phones. Otherwise they would not have had both Mini and SE. I mean it was a joke.
But Hanlon's razor and the way Apple has been on a screwing up spree of late I doubt it was anything intentional. They f'ed up knowing not what to do at all. They don't anymore.
Sometimes assuming just a tiny bit of malice can explain what otherwise had to be explained by a lot of stupidity.
Occam's razor beats Hanlon's razor.
How can KPIs from Google/Apple/Meta/X have any impact on the products third-party Android phone manufacturers decide to sell?
I think most major players have the same incentives and minor players don't have the economies of scale to make it work economically.
Also the longer I used my iphone mini and the rest of the world moved to comically large phones the more it became apparent that nobody is thinking about small screen form factors in design and when they do its only around ad placement.
But, for example, what is the money flow from google/advertising in general to Motorola, that makes them not want to release a small screen model in their lineup of cheap phones?
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I see it differently. Modern web → the browser → powerful CPU/GPU → big battery → big device → why not cover it with a big screen.
Couldn’t we make it thicker though? The rumored iPhone air is the exact opposite of what I want. Give me a thicker phone with a smaller screen and I’d pay Pro prices for it.
Thicker things don't fit in pockets as well, they're unwieldy.
I've gotten my EDC down to 1 leather ID sleeve with my credit card and drivers license in it, and my phone. This is probably still thicker then it should be, but it's soft so I don't feel the bulk or edges.
Air is intermediate to Fold (2X Air thickness) with 5.5" screen and $2K+ price, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44587911
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This is it, for a while battery life got worse for a while with more powerful chips. But then Samsung goes full in on the big size 6"+ phone and it got better again.
Now even at 80% original capacity, a Samsung can still last me throughout the day given that I am not watching videos constantly. The Iphone 6 back in the day would go to 40% in 3 hours, then suddenly to 5% in minutes.
Plus most people replace their laptop with a phone now. So the big screen size is a must.
That’s how I see it. Screen size is area (x^2) and battery size is volume (x^3). As battery life is a critical feature, a bigger screen fits better battery life.
The issue is "bigger numbers" marketing. The story for much of smartphone history was the flagship had a bigger screen.
But then it hit the practicable limits of what people can pocket/hold-comfortably.
If you make a phone with a smaller screen but want to call it "flagship" then you'd better have some good marketing to reverse the perception.
Please note that Samsung flagship S24 is smaller than non-flagship A55 (the same release year)
I think the other thing is pretty much everyone has a smartphone android/ios, and so the rev model has changed for android its youtube/movies, and for ios its apple tv.
No, the bigger devices just sold more. Larger screen size is a major factor in deciding which phone to buy globally.
I posted a bit too late and didn't see your post first, which more or less is exactly along my thinking.
Modern phones are sold (even at profit) with the intent that there is more payments/ad revenue coming down the line, for movies, TV, games and web browsing/social media. A big screen makes that experience better for people and advertisers. It's a cynical take, but the entire business model is based on building and promoting addiction.
They have no interest in selling phones for utility purposes only, even though that's largely how they advertise the phones, because advertising a 5 hour plus daily screen time isn't sexy at all.
Out of curiosity, why's it your last Apple product?
Watching lots of Louis Rossmann has put me almost ideologically against Apple (even though they design great hardware and smooth UX within their ecosystem), but I'm not good at forming coherent points to present to Apple loving friends.
For me so far, I think it's about control over what I buy - but the rebuttal is always "you're buying a product from them, if you don't like it then tough".
The opinion I got from Louis's content is that in a sense he is right, but also almost every brand is even worse. Apple does pretty much nothing to help 3rd party repair and sometimes actively impeeds it, but most other tech products do that while also not even having 1st party repair options.
I remember when Samsung had removable batteries, I went in to a Samsung store to buy a replacement for my S5 battery and they told me they didn't sell them, only new phones. Meanwhile I can take my iPhone in to any Apple store and they will replace the battery for me.
So yeah Apple does need to be forced to massively improve their practices but so does pretty much the entire tech industry aside from a few small projects that focus on being repairable.
I just don't see the value add anymore and the company appears to have lost its product vision and the design sensibilities are slipping. Apple is controlled by a geriatric board and a logistics expert and it shows.
I feel I am more frequently encountering software bugs, vaporware,(dESiGnEd fOr ApPle InTelLiGeNce), and ridiculous "innovation" (genmoji). I feel the hardware advances are not very relevant to me, I don't need VR or augmented reality. I want a computer to get out of my way and solve problems for me so I can spend time in plain old reality. The hardware upgrades I DO care about are ridiculously overpriced (Ram upgrades are abusively expensive).
While I prefer my computer to be a tool to get a job done and don't want the computer itself to be a hobby. I also do not want to be forced to use AI. I also dislike the rent seeking and toolbooth behavior of iMessage and the App store. Now that linux has more paved paths, things increasingly "just work" and hardware has basically caught up I don't see a good reason to support Apple's non-vision with my money.
What Linux computer can you buy with the battery life, quietness, lack of heat and speed of a modern ARM based Mac?
As far as phones - your alternative is to buy an Android phone with an operating system by an ad company that is also pushing AI just as hard.
And you still end up getting most apps from the Google Play Store.
By the way, iMessage supports SMS/MMS/RCS for interoperability. What else do you want?
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So you’re making voip calls on your thinkpad?
That’s cool, but you represent a tiny slice of the market that as devices get more powerful, isn’t addressable in the low volumes needed to make you happy.
When the chips needed to make a phone are priced like toys, maybe you’ll find the product for you.
I feel that the problem with small phones roots in software. Obviously you would need to run smaller resolution. My sweet spot was iPhone 4S. It has 3.5" display with 640x960 resolution. If you would try to run modern Android with this resolution, you would hit multiple obstacles, from popular apps to popular websites scaling badly.
Many people in Asia seem to prefer gigantic screens and since it is the largest market, most phones get produced that way.
> However, it does seem like there is a profitable business for someone there given how beloved it was/is.
Normal people didn’t love small phones. They loved their small iPhones.
When it comes down to it they will not love the Pine Phone Mini.
For the vast majority of people, the key feature is that it’s an iPhone not that it’s small.
I don’t know.If I have a “big” phone (anything bigger than the iphone mini, at least for me), I’ll leave it at home most of the time. But if it’s small, I’ll take it with me everywhere. So I can be bombarded with crap more time if I use a small phone.
Phones are big now because people want better cameras and longer battery life. Also, people are spending 4-5 hours more per day on screens than they did 15 years ago, so they want bigger screen for reading, playing games and watching videos.
I know I can’t claim to be “the norm”, but all I want is a smaller phone with 1–2 day battery life. I don’t need a better screen, a better camera, or ever more compute. (It’s a freaking smartphone, not a game console!) All I need my phone to do is run a web browser, messaging apps, maps, my banking app, and random little apps some organisations force you to use – like my university’s app, my city’s public transport app, or half the restaurants here. Things that could easily be done with 10–15 year old hardware. Sadly, the industry chose to keep the power consumption constant increasing while computational power, instead of focusing on smaller devices and longer battery life with the same power.
Again, I’m not angry that current phones exist; I’m just sad there aren’t (good) alternatives – at least that I know of.
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I thought the theory behind the 12 and 13 minis was that Apple had a huge surplus of parts that they needed to offload, and making the minis was a profitable way of doing that.
But they launched alongside the flagship devices?
I think that’s the SEs.
It’s an interesting take but I believe most people just prefer bigger phone. I know it’s weird to those of us who like the opposite and funnily enough it’s often women who have gigantic phone, which they can’t put in their tiny jean pocket.
I don’t explain it and every time I get explained they like it better because it’s got bigger battery and bigger screen, I just don’t understand how you could live your life with a brick constantly on you but it’s what people want.
The market just adapted to the demand and it’s not a 40k « petition » that will change much.
> I know it’s weird to those of us who like the opposite and funnily enough it’s often women who have gigantic phone, which they can’t put in their tiny jean pocket.
Most women carry their phone in a hand bag anyway as the pockets on most pants for women are way to small either way [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/style/pockets-womens-clot...
Most women pants have no or fake pockets anyway, So the smartphone to pants pocket size relationship is usually only a parameter for men.
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But it's also true that manufacturers don't always serve niches well
Do you have any fact at all to back your opinion?
Curious, what happened to the Palm phone (https://palm.com/)?
Bigger screens mean more time spent, more ad real estate, more "content," more dopamine loops
I don't think that's cynical- it's obvious that larger screens allow more phone usage and more ads on the larger screen.
It's still a cynical point of view nonetheless
I used to buy ZenFones, but they're huge now. It feels like there's some combination of poor sales and parts commonality that causes the problem, not a shadowy conspiracy, since I don't think ASUS and other manufacturers have a significant way to benefit from phone addiction.
I have the last non-huge ZenFone.
The new ZenFones are just rebadged ROGs which explains the massive size jump. I'm not looking forward to replacing this phone when it ages out.
Phones had smaller screens when you needed the keypad to interact with the largest number of features.
Phone screen sizes grew as the applications that could use screen space grew in demand.
People are watching 1080p films on the train now. The people who want smaller screens are usually willing to deal with a larger one. People who want larger screens usually cant operate their use cases on a smaller screen. Larger screens also tend to mask larger case meaning less miniaturisation required for the components.
None of this explains why it's just impossible to get small phones.
You have people who want them unusably large and people who want them to fit in your hand. The solution in every other market is that products are manufactured to fit both sets of needs. You don't see pants coming in one size with the advice "wear a belt".
What's going on?
I agree with the sentiment, but pants is a very funny example.
Every manufacturer seems to think people are either tall and fat or short and slim. I'm tall and my only alternative is literally to wear a belt.
>You don't see pants coming in one size with the advice "wear a belt".
Great example. Because people who are shorter than average tend to have to get pants taken up, and people who are vastly taller than average tend to go to specialty stores.
The average height of pants is largely dictated by what the market will permit, requiring people to make adjustments or leave the market. Having a 2d matrix of height and width defined pant sizes is too complex for the market to bother with.
Technology is worse, anything that requires tooling is done the least number of times possible. While small phone enjoyers are disadvantaged, they arent disadvantaged enough to force them out of the market. Larger tooling is easier to make and caters to all other preferences.
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> What's going on?
You're in a minority, it's not profitable to cater to you, and most people don't care.
That's the cold hard truth of it.
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I think that's the cart before the horse. People buy the big phones and so businesses cater for that.
That makes no sense. The only phone companies that make money from how often you use your phone and buy apps on it are Apple and Google. If there were a market for it other companies would make them.
As far as the mini phones - because physics - the battery life is atrocious. That was one of the main drivers for me to get a larger phone. Well that and because I can pull down the Control Center and use the widget to make everything on my phone larger and still be able to use it without wearing my glasses. With my glasses, I keep everything the smallest size
But Apple and Google (Pixel) are a huge portion of the market..
The other manufacturers are forced to go along with the market leaders, but sometimes also side-load apps for post-device-sale revenue.
The pixel is not a “huge portion of the market”. It’s 4% of the market in the US (https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insight/post-insight-us...) and a nothingburger outside of it.
Globally, Apple has what 20% market share? And besides Qualcomm chips, Apple has a complete separate parts supply chain than Android.
Besides, Samsung could definitely create its own small phone and would if there were a market.
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Pointless rant. Apple does not earn more or less depending on how many ads it can show.
The market has spoken, it's not worthwhile for Apple to produce small phones.
There are a million companies that are not Google that could also produce mini phones and don't for the same exact reason: most people want large screens to enjoy videos and photos.
Nobody cares about small screens and pockets, everyone holds their phones in their hands or purses at all times.
Conspiracy minded bullshit.
Like it or not, Apple keeps cancelling smaller phone lines because they don't sell well. That's it. If they sold really well then they'd keep selling them, but they don't.
I would also love more capable small phones personally, but I can't deny that people overall don't seem to want them.
I thought that was the case but I tried going small.
I owned an iPhone 13 mini. Basically the perfect small phone if there ever was one.
The downsides are extensive and the upsides are few.
- Battery life sucked. Since a phone is a 3D object making it bigger substantially increases battery capacity. It also makes packaging difficult especially if the goal is a flagship-quality phone. Good luck fitting in good hardware with a lot of features.
- Eyestrain. It’s small.
- Typing. It sucks. The phone is small.
And it turns out the upside of one-handed operation is limited. A simple PopSocket or OhSnap! will make large phones easy to use in one hand.
Plus, if pocketability is your issue, you can buy a folding phone like a Motorola Razr and still get a nice big screen when you pull it out.
I disagree. I'm reading and typing this from an iPhone 13 mini. I use a big one for work so it's not like I don't know what I'm missing. I very strongly prefer the small form factor
I mean, are the phones themselves really making money off ads or are those totally separate companies? I don't disagree that this brings in business, but I don't agree that this is a significant motivator in terms of phone sizes
What an angry way to say "they're bigger because people use the screen for apps and media."