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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
This is equivalent to something I called the "QWERTY paradox" more than a decade ago:
Back when the Smartphone market exploded, people disliked typing on a touchscreen and repeatedly stated that they want a device with a physical keyboard.
There was plenty of evidence, surveys, market studies, trend predictions, devices for these "Messaging-centric" use-cases were always part of this market-demand roster.
But whenever someone answered the call and built a Smartphone with QWERTY keyboard, the product failed commercially, simply because also to people claiming they want such a phone, at the point of sale they were less attractive than their slimmer, lighter, all-screen counterparts.
Every major vendor went through this cycle of learning that lesson, usually with an iteration like "it needs to be a premium high-spec device" --> (didn't sell) --> "ah, it should be mass-market" --> (also didn't sell).
You can find this journey for every vendor. Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Sony.
The same lessons were already learnt for small-screen devices: There was a "Mini" series of Samsung Galaxy, LG G-series, HTC One, Sony Xperia. It didn't sell, the numbers showed that it didn't attract additional customers, at best it only fragmented the existing customer-base.
Source: I work in that industry for a long time now
My theory is that much of this effect is an error, or at least a far-less-than-ideal effort, on the part of the designers. Of course it’s hard to sell a low-end “mini” device with a worse camera, worse battery life, etc. But that’s not actually what I, or many people I discuss this with, want. I would happily buy a premium device that is short and narrow, and possibly even thicker as a tradeoff. There’s plenty of unexplored room in the design space here. For example: start with an iPhone Pro or whatever the Android equivalent du jour is. Keep the camera unchanged. Shrink the display but keep the same quality (at least equal pixel density). Now puff out the back so that the camera lenses are flat or even slightly recessed. Use the resulting added volume to compensate for the decrease in volume due to decreasing the other dimensions. Market the think as a Whatever Phone Pro Compact, and advertise clearly that the battery life is every bit as good as the non-Compact model version. Show off cool pictures models sticking this thing in their cool jeans pockets without them sticking out. Charge the same price as the ordinary Pro model.
As far as I know, no one has tried anything like this in recent memory. The iPhone 12 and 13 Mini were always marketed as the cheaper versions, and the cute little old SE model was very much a low-end version. Last I checked, there was no 5G Android device with similar dimensions from any manufacturer.
Apple apparently sold a couple million iPhone 13 minis. Ford reliably sold more than 100,000 Focus cars in the US annually before deciding to discontinue it. But Apple and Ford decided they were better served redirecting that engineering effort towards more profitable projects.
It just frustrating when these gaps occur and there's no smaller player to fill them. A couple million small smartphones or a couple hundred thousand compact cars sounds like enough to sustain a business, but it isn't enough for the big players to care, and small players can't affordably create a competitive offering.
This kind of over-generalization is always annoying me deeply.
Of course there IS a market for such a product, because at the very least I exist (as well as a good fraction of the 320 other people from HN who upvoted this submission so far).
The problem is that this market is tiny, and even a smaller share of this market is willing to make massive concessions on other aspects of the phone to have a smaller phone, so you end up with a much harder design space (because size is a big engineering constraint) for a minority market, and the endeavor is often not profitable enough for that reason.
It doesn't mean there's no market, it just means addressing this particular market is a tough business, these two statements aren't equivalent.
But there aren't hundreds of millions of people like me. And the bar for "success" is selling that many units so it gets considered a "failure"
Well, there was BlackBerry. Multiple phone vendors assuming they could refresh a previously world-dominating form factor with contemporary smartphone guts only seems unreasonable in hindsight.
I hope that small companies would launch device like this with 500-1000 devices being created and sold in a year just fulfill the niche and doesn't go bankrupt
Which is a shame, because I can sympathize with most of these requests.
I want something like Kick-starter which operates the same way but isn't meant for funding the creator to get the upfront capital investment - just avoiding existing companies getting burned out of the "let's listen to a niche slice of our customers instead of appealing to the masses" mindset. Companies put up a weird product proposal and see if enough people will commit to buying it to at least break even.
Then, if there's enough of a commitment, those people get something they actually want. If there's not enough, then there's a specific reason that you can point to to explain why.
This is almost equivalent to the normal market model (people buy things they want, and niche products don't get made much), except with a more explicit feedback step, to help people realize that if they don't actually put their money where their mouth is, then things won't get made.
There's probably a better way to do this, but I'm not sure how. Ultimately I just want my non-electronic electric car.
The real reason the iPhone mini failed is not related to screen size, it's because its segment was canibalized by the cheaper alternative, the SE. The 2020 and 2022 sold like hot breads, wherehas their screen was almost an inch smaller than the iPhone mini. This is the proof that there a significant market for people who don't care about size and would gladly take the smallest option at a $100 discount from the regular one.
Similar to the „ARTE effect“: When French TV audiences where polled, frequently around 10% responded, that they were watching Arte (an artsy government funded intelligentsia TV channel) on a daily basis.
yet the ratings rarely surpass 2%
Currently, foldable smartphones (the flip phone ones) seem to be the fashionable alternative to small phones, but they're even more expensive than the huge ones.
Although, it's not exactly what he wished for in 2022 since it doesn't run standard Android and obviously doesn't have industrial design like the iPhone mini.
I'm starting to see the same trend with laptops without a keyboard now. There's an entire generation of 8-16 yos who never used a keyboard and type fast on ipad screens. In a decade, it's a real possibility that keyboardless laptops become the standard...
As it stands the kind of people who want a smaller phone almost by definition need to be a bit savvier than the market in general to know such a thing still exists and along with that will have greater skepticism towards Android phones having any kind of post market support.
It'd basically have to come from Samsung to hit the all the price/quality/trust requirements. Feel like they've already got a lot of the pieces there with their corporate targeted XCover range just shrink them down a bit.
And... I love it and use it all the time. Into the pocket it goes, great for going out.
I would buy an iphone mini 16/17/18 no questions asked.
When it comes to the marketing side of things, I think back to a story where one of the soft drink companies tried to find the best soft drink taste. They found out that they couldn't optimize for the one true taste because... different people had different favorites.
Show me the tiny Android flagship from the past 5 years that didn't sell well. (You can't, because there wasn't one.)
Blackberries? Granted, they failed but for a completely different reason.
So, it did sell, but at the expense of larger phones. Which means we are not offered this because it's a bit more profitable for the smartphone makers to only offer larger phones. Extremely annoying.
I bought Motorola Droid 4 when it came out. I was so desperate to have a new phone with physical QWERTY, that I bought it blindly, even though it wasn't available in Europe, even though I have never seen it, even though I knew it *didn't support mobile networks* in Europe for a few months, to be fixed by an update. I had to use a coworker who was going on vacation to Florida.
When it arrived, the first thing I saw was that the black screen during boot shines bright blueish, horribly bad contrast. Then when image appeared, I've learned that it has two subpixels per image pixel, for efficiency. This made single color areas show the pixels very visibly.
Then I took a photo. The quality reminded me of a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone I had 6 years back, except the colors were much worse. Everything was blueish. It had a physical (touch) "search" button below the screen, but companies like Google didn't seem to understand why it would be useful to search for anything, so most of their apps didn't react to it. Especially Gmail.
But hey, I could touch-type any long message, and I could use SSH client conveniently (it even had a physical CTRL button).
Other than the keyboard (pretty solid too), it was one of the worst phones I ever had. So yeah, based on that model the market decided that "nobody wants keyboard phones", and the Droid 5 never came out.
Because it's easy to blame the most standing out feature.
I have no idea why that was the case and can't even speculate since I don't know enough about how the networks worked, but I would love to hear an explanation. I was pretty annoyed by the fact that I still needed to own what I considered a phablet, which was sitting collecting dust on my bedside table at home just so I could have the type of phone I really wanted. Seemed like a punishment-by-design for trying to step off the typical customer rails.
My tastes have changed slightly these days, and I'm okay with a 5.X" screen or whatever, but now I want it to be eInk or something similar and focus more on text/sms as I've gotten pretty minimalism with my phone use.
I haven't upgraded yet.
Why does everyone (most of you too?) like bigger screens? The mini screen is big enough for HN, reddit, banking, photos, etc.
No. They were a) rare and b) much more expensive. AFAIK only Blackberry had a phone with QWERTY keyboard.
Buttons are much more expensive than a touchscreen (see cars for examples).
[0]: when Steve Jobs still ran the company at least
I used the Palm Phone (PVG100) (3.3" screen) (basically the size of a credit card) [ https://www.ricklohre.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/dsc_097... ] as long as I could until it became too slow to use as software got slower and increasingly battery-hungry and I had to give it up last year.
Right now I have a Soyes S10Max, which has a 3.5" screen (same screen size as the original iPhone), but it's kinda chunky. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRZ47T53?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...
The specs are more than strong enough to handle whatever I need on a daily basis. But I miss the slimmer size of the Palm Phone.
Right now I've pre-ordered this phone https://aiphor.com/products/bluefox-nx1-4-0-android-smartpho... with the 8gigram+128gig storage capacity. Has an even stronger cpu than the Soyes, but I am slightly worried about the resolution of 540x1168px because some elements may end up overlapping.
Even though it's 4", it has a tiny bezel so it's only slightly bigger than the Palm Phone, although a bit thicker cuz of a bigger battery. But still relatively slim, especially compared to the Soyes.
Front comparison: https://preview.redd.it/dtwnubx05scf1.png?width=3840&format=...
https://preview.redd.it/s2391amd7hbf1.png?width=320&crop=sma...
Will see!
the article's "small phone" benchmark with a 5.4" screen is almost the same size in every dimension as your benchmark of the HTC 8x
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/HTC-8XT,Apple-iPhone-...
Huh, for some reason, this page loads properly and I can see it for 1-2 seconds, but it seems like as soon as it's done loading, it redirects me to google.com. Based in Spain, so guessing it's their way of turning away EU or European customers I guess?
(By the way from some reason aiphor.com automatically redirects me to google.com unless I disable Javascript.)
Most people only use computers at work, solely relying on smartphones for communication, media, shopping, etc.
It makes sense to have a big screen at inconvenience of having to carry it around.
What surprises me is how small the demand for small phones is. I have absolutely no need for a big screen - I have a monitor.
They have to because of stupid pinch-to-zoom. You either have to balance the phone in the palm of your non-dominant hand (literally switch the phone from one hand to the other) while pinching with your dominant hand, or do a sort of goatse thing with your thumbs while holding the phone in both hands.
Screw-to-zoom is a million times better: draw a spiral to the right and you get closer, spiral to the left and you get farther away (agreeing with the "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey" standard.) Easily done with any single finger, or even with the thumb of the hand holding the phone (for people with adequate thumb-wrestling skills.)
A lot of us do, yes.
> and carry a bag everywhere?
As a guy in 36" waist jeans (yeah I need to lose a few kg)... I can fit an iphone 16 pro max in my pocket pretty comfortably.
> Why do people want these giant phones?
Well, one reason is that I'm getting older and don't find it as easy to read tiny text on tiny screens any more. Another reason is that I sometimes watch streaming services on there.
Also it's shiny and the battery lasts forever.
https://blog.bschwind.com/2025/01/11/the-original-iphone-se-...
I found using the browser is a good enough alternative for many apps, and it also makes them less addictive because they aren’t as slick. Particularly handy for work apps.
A friend jokingly calls it my "microphone", another a "prison phone" (due to its size allowing for more easily smuggling in body cavities). Occasionally I go to mobile phone shops and ask if they have a case for it just for the fun of seeing the look on their faces when they see it (I don't actually want a case, and in fact it came with one which I threw in the bin).
Personally, I couldn't be happier with it.
Only problems: they don't do software updates; camera is poor; non-OLED screen.
In an ideal world I'd have a slightly bigger phone, but not too much bigger. I've grown very fond of this phone.
My personal device is a Motorola Razr 50 Ultra, which I got because while it's huge when flipped, it's portable enough when it's closed. I can have it in my pocket without it falling out.. without it being annoying while i put on shoes etc...
I use its cover screen a fair amount too, to avoid having to flip it open, which is also why I got the ultra rather than the slightly smaller version.
There are some decent small Android phones, if you're willing to buy non-mainstream brands. Take a look at:
In addition to being small, with SD card and 3.5mm jack, it is water resistant and has a removable battery. It is also one of the most robust non-hardened phones. It has an IR blaster too if it matters to you.
It was a time when Samsung was known for its gimmicks, the one for the Galaxy S5 is "Air View", where it recognizes your finger hovers over the screen. It is actually a good one, because it supports the "hover" targets in web pages!
Most people find it ugly though, and I tend to agree, but if you use a case, like most people do, who cares what the phone inside looks like?
Re: TFA, I'm all for filling the small phone niche, but there's no way I'm paying a cent over $500 for a phone with no resale value.
It is only going to get worse. Most of us who were young adults when the iPhone was announced are in our 40s now, and presbyopia is a real thing. In a few years my daily QOL will be better served by a bigger phone and I suspect many people around my age are feeling the same thing. The "small electronic accessory I bring around" niche will be filled by smartwatches.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/dijok5/is_there_a_... (how quaint the prices look, a mere 6 years on)
It's OK if they just make one every couple of years. But please: at least every couple of years.
That's a landline phone, you can buy it for cheap.
Also, if you want really small device, I found smartwatches are nice adjunct to phone. Can check notifications and do basic things on watch instead of pulling out phone. The watch uses phone for data, but there is no point in terminals when smartwatch chip can handle that. There are watches with LTE that work without the phone.
I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31411191 - May 2022 (1053 comments)
I cannot justify $700 as much as I _really want a smaller phone_. But _maybe if it was built to last_ I would be the customer and I would tell all my friends.
Currently use a Pixel 7a because it was cheap and OK. I was debating the iPhone 12 mini but it was already a little old, and I prefer Android.
I suspect, if others are like me, that those who want small phones also just want something that works and is a little minimal - not necessarily all the power best camera etc. To be clear, I _don't_ want one of those minimalist dumbphones, I want _a smartphone_ that's small Do y'all feel the same?
Propose a $500 small phone that's OK on specs but LASTS.
Zenphones until the 10 had easy to unlock bootloaders, leading to long in official support by the community. However with the 10 ASUS stopped that tool and they've been lying ever since that they're still working on it.
My zenfone is now on its final major android update, the rather minor android 15 version, and I've only got two years of security updates left until I need to look for a new phone. That's one thousand euros for barely four years of software support, it's such a disappointment.
That aside the camera is lackluster, it's auto whitebalance is horrific, turning the same snowy scene into a sunset or illuminated by fluorescent light depending on the phase of the moon and it's sampling questionable making images much more blurry in a surreal way. But the optical stabilisation is seriously impressive. Overall I preferred the pixel 4a's images though. A smaller phone and my zenfone's predecessor.
At least I get to just plug it into my stereo thanks to the 3.5mm jack though.
iPhone 16/Zenfone/13 Mini (in mm)
Height: 147.6/146.5/131.5 - the mini is 15mm shorter than the Zenfone which is only 1.1mm shorter than an iPhone.
Width: 71.6/68.1/64.2 - the mini is 3.9mm thinner than the Zenfone which is 3.5mm thinner than an iPhone
Depth: 7.8/9.4/7.7 - the Zenfone is significantly thicker than the iPhones.
Volume: 82.4/93.8/65.0 cubic cm - the Zenfone is physically larger than an iPhone 16 by a decent margin.
The Zenfone simply isn't close to an iPhone mini size. It's larger than an iPhone by volume and the depth does matter when holding it. If we're talking about front-edge to opposite front-edge, we're talking about 87.2mm for the iPhone vs 86.9mm for the Zenfone and 79.6 for the Mini. The Zenfone saves you 0.3mm in grip-distance over an iPhone, but a Mini saves you 7.6mm in grip-distance.
Heck, let's look at weight. A Zenfone is 172g, iPhone 170g, iPhone mini 141g. The Zenfone is the heaviest of the three.
One of the big limiting factors for Android phone manufacturers is the battery. iOS is a ton more efficient. The Zenfone is thicker to accommodate a 4300mAh battery compared to the iPhone 16's 3561mAh (21% larger battery). And the Zenfone's battery is kinda small by Android standards.
People often don't think about the challenges of making a small phone. The electronics don't shrink. If you need a certain square mm for those electronics, they take up a larger percentage of the interior on your mini. You don't need as large a battery because the screen it is powering is smaller, but not proportional to its size - you're still drawing the same power for all the electronics. So you have a smaller percentage of interior space for the battery and you need a larger battery relative to the interior space - or you need to sacrifice battery life as Apple did with the mini.
For example, the iPhone 13 mini is 84.4 sq cm and has a 2438mAh battery. The iPhone 13 is 104.9 sq cm with a 3240mAh battery. The iPhone 13 is 24% larger, but can accommodate a 33% larger battery - because the electronics take up basically the same space regardless of form factor.
So to make an Android mini, you'd be sacrificing a lot of battery life. The Zenfone is not a mini. Its grip-size is basically identical to an iPhone. In every way, it's much more an iPhone than a mini.
and end-up only Sony products comes out. and I sacrificed performance for a shorter phone so I bought Xperia Ace III.
but I don't know when will my ISP shutdown GSM-1800. If this happens I have to buy Xperia 10 series then.
https://www.gizchina.com/2013/11/07/jiayu-g5-unboxing-hands-...
https://www.gizchina.com/2013/09/18/exclusive-hands-video-st...
https://www.gizmochina.com/2013/09/22/teardown-picture-jiayu...
That was the "peak smartphone" era for me; lots of companies making slightly different variations on Androids, at relatively low prices, but almost all of them with the same basic set of practical features which are nearly extinct today. Now it seems all we get are faster CPUs and RAM, more (non-removable) storage and battery capacity, no headphone jacks, a very limited choice of screen sizes, and far too many cameras along with the obligatory unremovable spyware and locked-down OS.
Basically you have to make compromises on performance and camera and then this was, what i came up with: - Zenfone 10 (flagship with prices still above launch price (!), which soon gets no updates anymore) - Unihertz Jelly Max (small, but thick and bad camera) - Rakuten Hand 5G and Rakuten Mini (also bad camera and older Android) - Balmuda Phone (which i really like, but also bad camera and discontinued, so probably not even security updates and no custom rom support) - Bluefox NX1 (really tempting, but appearantly kind of bad build quality and no NFC)
All other options are even older phones. Samsung S25 line does exist, but i really like vanilla Android. I think the price chart of the Zenfone DOES somehow indicates the existence of a market and i wonder if it would be big enough for a small niche player!?
Personally I am considering a pixel 8, which is the "smallest" of current phones, but it still really isn't small. And i don't see myself as a Google customer because of the battery topic...
I personally would have been more happy had Eric made a small android phone instead of the new pebble, but hey...
Any other current gen recommendations?
Ended up with Galaxy S25 which weighs around 165g.
I pretty much hate Samsung for the One UI interface taking away the stock Android experience. If I could turn it all off I'd do it in a heartbeat.
But I put up with it because there is no other Android phone in 2025 that meets all the checkboxes (less than ~180g, supports all the current LTE and 5G comms, supported by the vendor).
I recommend the pixel 4a 5g with LineageOS installed, or the Q9 mini.
I have it since more than a year. I had the first one two weeks because I lost it as it fall through a hole in my pocket. So fix your pockets and buy this phone. I'm really happy with it :) And didn't found bugs since I have it.
I beg to differ. How much marketing money did Apple spend on the mini line, in comparison to the "standard" size ?
> And when launched - no one buys it.
Pixel 3 and 4a are still the most sold phones in the Pixel line.
The news when Pixel7 was launched:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/this-is-the...
I would've bought the 13 Mini Pro if it had existed, but camera quality wasn't something I was willing to compromise on.
In my mind, these companies are all so massive they can afford a little fragmentation for the obviously small market, with no meaningful impact to their sales numbers or profits.
On the iPhone minis, there's very obviously a market for them, but the market is so small compared to the market for "all iPhones" that it practically vanishes in comparison, which leads Apple to not bother. Is it really that expensive to maintain a more niche line for each generation?
Think of just the work that goes into having an assembly line customized for a specific form factor. To keep price, quality, and profit in line with their other phones I think the answer here is clearly yes.
Quick search for just display size found these 10 phones released after 2023: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2023&fDisplay...
* A phone, not a watch
* Android 14 or later OS
* Thickness: 9mm max
* Height: 150mm max
* Width: 71mm max
and three of them are the overpriced Samsung Galaxy S phones. Only 7 released since 2020:
https://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3?nYearMin=2020&nHeightMa...
and they are Samsung Galaxy S's, a couple of Asus ZenFone's, and Google Pixel 5.
If you're willing to add another 5mm, there are also a couple of Sony Xperia's and Sharp Aquous, and Google Pixel 8. And if you want to cap the height at 145 mm - it's just Google Pixel 5.
My favorite to take with me is the 13 Mini. Would love an iPhone 18 mini.
I used to have a Pixel 5. As somebody who uses phones minimally (<10 min average screentime per day), but still wants utilities beyond a feature phone for special use cases (maps, translate, digital tickets, public transport, NFC payments), it was about as small as I needed it to be to tuck it away in my pocket for the whole day. It was also quite a nice form factor with a black stone-like back case, which didn't seem to scuff or attract fingerprints.
I had two of them. The first one lasted 2 years before the battery swelled up and I had to dispose of it. Google replaced it for free with another. Then eventually Google Pay stopped being supported on the second, since it was a few years beyond security updates.
After that I found no alternative within the Android ecosystem. I don't want to get into Apple products (despite minimal use, I did have the phone customised so that it was stripped bare in terms of apps and notifications, and had a launcher which I preferred over Google's native design), and every tech blog talking about small phones led back to Pixel 5, or one of the ones just after which was also out of sale and security coverage.
Even though they are sold at profit, I get the feeling phones are viewed by the industry as vehicles. Get one with a big screen into peoples hands, then keep riding on the payments for games, movies, TV and web browsing that follows that. As somebody who never used my phone for any of these things, I'm clearly not important to the market for the one-off payment of a new phone every 5/6 years.
Btw:
1. Unihertz recently launched a BlackBerry esque phone (titan 2), if anyone reading this is interested. (Not sponsored by them)
2. There are many forums (and I think r/smallphones on reddit) where you can find much more discussion on such topics if you're interested.
If Unihertz kept their phones up to date for a few years after launch, rather than only for the few years prior to launch, they would be an incredibly strong competitor in this space but as they are they are next to useless.
Get used to making calls on a TV tray, and walking around looking like a schlub in cargo shorts for the rest of your life.
Screen power draw and battery capacity scale as the square of the linear dimension. They largely cancel out.
However, all the other hardware are a fixed size so proportionally large phones have longer battery lives.
Like internal component can be rearranged to an extent, and battery is a tradeoff, but the panel need to be one on the market, no demand, no panel
I can.
Nothing will make happier than ditching Apple and get a smaller Android phone. In fact the size of iPhone 5s was the only reason that had piqued my interest and I had migrated to the iPhones. Then I stayed for other (and important) reasons.
> Stock Android OS
Ah, no. I take that back. That is not going to be worth 700-800 just for the size! In fact take more and put it to a fight which tries to force Google to "decolonise" every aspect of this mobile OS and push for apps to go for alternative app stores.
But as long as Google has it claws and fingers and feet and palm and teeth (imagine every other organ) into my data (and also existence via sensors and what not) on an Android phone in every way possible (sometimes not even imaginable), such pervasive and entangled, that getting out of this Kafkaesque privacy nightmare means using a custom ROM that no OEM supports (or probably will every support) and half the app I use (including bank/payment/Govt apps) will stop functioning and it makes me feel like puking - even the thought of being tracked like that non-stop!
Until then sadly I will contribute to the trillions of Apple and participate in this cozy duopoly these companies have established and rather be in this Kafkaesque control and closed walled garden. It is sad.
So no, I am done with "Stock Android OS" trope at this point :(
The reality is - and it is a sad truth - such a phone in today's world can only exist as a vanity/niche product and hence even with high cost it will suffer from lack of support, abandoned update/upgrade promises, and a really really bad support experience unless it is released to "just few cities" (not even few countries) because this is going to attract such a small number of people!
It doesn't have the Google Play Store but one can sideload Android apps onto it
Smaller size means smaller battery, but that's mitigated by the above. I want utilitarian. I don't want a phablet. I want practical and unobtrusive. The smartwatch was meant to replace the phone, but doesn't hit the right notes for me.
Today, bluetooth works quite well for me (I love not having cables... but it sucks that performance with a microphone is trashfire). 3.5mm adapters are cheap and easy when needed (rarely. I also have a $10 bluetooth->3.5mm in my travel kit that does get used once a year!). And with usb-c providing fast charging, I rarely feel like I'd benefit from battery swaps. I can give myself 50%+ in 30 minutes, with a portable battery that will power not just my phone, but any other device I run into. With Qi 2.2 releasing with 25W wireless charging, and magnetic coupling being standard now, you don't even need wires anymore. Carrying a bespoke phone-only battery seems like a massive downgrade today. (It also felt like a massive fire hazard!) Time to update your expectations!
Worth mentioning that battery swaps make water-resistance much much trickier to pull off. There' a real cost to battery-swappability.
I do wish we saw something like Ara, some phone modularity & extensibility. Fairphone has some modular parts, but it doesn't feel like an open ecosystem, and the parts dont seem super designed for expansion but more just replacement. I guess maybe Framework is doing the best work, albeit in a bigger form factor space, with their Expansion Cards, which are basically just a card form factor USB-C. Licensed CC-BY-4. https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards
Still want my phone battery to be replaceable, but I'm pretty fine with not being able to do it myself.
So, uh, can I please have that but with a more modern SoC and a non-potato camera?
I don't understand how the market isn't considered big enough for any phone OEM: how can it be smaller than that of foldables? Or even if it is, isn't it still big enough, and shouldn't there generally be more sizes and form factors of phones?
It's as tho the car industry decided to only make 184" long SUVs (6.2-6.7" phones) and 200" long 3-row SUVs (foldables)... no other SUVs, no sedans/hatchbacks, no sports cars (much smaller and much lower volume). And different cars are actually hard to engineer and mass-manufacture the chassis and bodies for... in contrast a phone's HW is inherently more modular and mostly just the screen and battery need to be changed for each size.
Convincing main brands to dump 100s of millions to cater to small phone crowd should be proven DOA by now. The minimalist EDC crowd is niche aberration, most people throughout civilization EDC was more cumbersome. Most people are simply happy carrying more shit around. Look at Stanley cups.
TBH 99% of big phone yucky crowd problems would be solved by a lanyard, but that's too goofy in the west. IMO what we need is better pockets. Front of legs or side belly of shirt. Have a little place to attach a chain like pocket watches. Fix for big phones is not a smaller phone, but better accessory/wardrobe.
This is only true for the American lifestyle of home-car-office-car-home. If you need to walk for more than 30 seconds Stanley cups become extremely inconvenient.
And yes I do want smaller phones. Samsung S10e was the perfect size tbh.
But no it seems the option dwindle and now I can't find a phone smaller than my thumb. At least some phones have a "shrink screen" option, but that's not the same thing as a smaller phone tbh
Anyways, are you sure you're talking about the iPhone 16?
The foldables are such an interesting concept. I actually had a Surface Duo for a while (though a different style of foldable) and really liked it, but I only had one after they were a year old and I could try it out with a used phone for ~$200.
With Android working on including a "desktop mode" where you can add a screen and HID devices, I sure hope that the phone screens will get smaller again.
I tried all my reasoning skills to persuade her to stick with android, but ultimately she nagged me into getting a second hand one that is still way too expensive in my opinion.
Well it looks like she is right and this is popular opinion. Perhaps small Android phones not selling well is a marketing problem. I've never seen one advertised with size being a selling point.
I'd be willing to take less battery life to get something like this, but nearly everything that's anywhere close either has no NFC (which means mobile payments are out the door) or doesn't have 5G or just has such an awful camera/processor as to be basically unusable for many every-day tasks.
I loved it for being so small and light. The last few years it became too slow for regular use (and many apps refused to install) so I put it in airplane mode and used it as an mp3 player.
I'd still be using it today, but I lost it! I was very sad.
I also loved the LG K8 (2017), wonderful device. That one was a touch bigger, but had a really nice curved screen.
I used an iPhone SE (2016) until last year actually, which was even smaller.
It worked fine, until software updates made it useless. That's a recurring theme with my phones!
I believe the big manufacturers don't want to make a small phone (as other users have indicated) because of the big screen's addictiveness. Also, they can't fit a large battery in them so battery life would be a few hours with 1000mp 16k cameras.
I'd rather carry a 1" thick, 4" tall phone than a 0.3" thick 8" tall phone. No pants pockets look normal anymore, and it is even more awkward to walk with tight pants.
Someone pinch me awake when that happens, thanks.
> must have great low light performance
You'll probably have to compromise here a little too. Having "good" smartphone cameras is more about the software than the hardware (there's only so much you can do with small apertures and small sensors), and the flagships have huge R&D investments behind them.
I too want a small phone, and I'd be willing to settle for "passable" camera quality.
I bought an iPhone 15 and a Pixel 7 at the same time when I started a new job 2 years ago. I keep my work stuff on the iPhone. For the first year, I kept them in the same pocket and had them both everywhere with me. The Pixel within a few weeks was starting to look beat up. The iPhone still looks practically brand new.
Just last night, I got home, pulled my Pixel out of my pocket, and found a crack near the corner of the screen. Now the screen is glitching out on the bottom 15% of the screen. I didn't drop it, I didn't bump into anything. Regular pocket pressure while sitting in my car must have bent it and it buckled.
My wife has had similar experiences with Samsung phones.
If it weren't for the lack of good browsers on iOS, I'd put up with the shitty keyboard.
But I don't know why new innovative people are not getting into smartphone making.
Everyone is trying to make the next big software. But why that grit is missing to bring the variety into small hardware devices that target majority?
Or, is it not reaching people like me? Is it the lack of awareness?
They can be quite chunky but honestly not too bad
I get the "just works" with decent privacy aspect of the smaller iPhone, health benefits from Apple Watch and for anything requiring longer screen time, termux, shelter cloned apps etc. I use the bigger android (Infact I'm typing this on the excellent HN client Hacki from android).
Earlier I used to use Apple Watch with android using a tool I built[1] which now serves notifications from android to my iPhone.
I'm glad Eric is going ahead with the small phone.
[1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/apple-watch-with-android
Give them a permanent place in the lineup, treating phones like every other very personal device meant for humans. Small, medium, and large.
If you do that, and give people time to see exactly why 5.42 screens are superior to 6.1"+ sizes, then I think the numbers will start to change from what we saw with the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 13 mini, which were both launched when people were less on the go than in 100 years.
Moved to a Pixel 2 and then to a Pixel 5. I'm happy with the 5, good size and good features, fast enough for what I want and battery is okay.
Also, you can buy reasonably sized Android phones. They're still big-ish compared to say, 2008, but not huge considering the lack of bezel.
I carry an 8 inch tablet (fits in a jacket pocket) and do most of my mobile web, email, podcast listening etc. on that, using my phone as a hotspot. Can't buy a new 8 inch tablet with a fingerprint reader. Got a couple of 2nd hand ones on eBay and will soon look at putting LineageOS on them (they have out of date versions of Android).
Now I kind of dread what will be available when it's time to finally upgrade this year. Am sure they could make a new mini that didn't seem as compromised, but now they think the size is non-viable.
Bring back when small was not a synonym for cheaper.
Really sad, because the device was physically very practical, and I don't really need such a big screen, just smart UIs like we used to have, that don't cram the screen full of every feature of every PM that ever worked at the company.
I busted out my old 4S, and the fit//finish,, materials, and just how nice it is to hold in your hand and operate are still really nice. Would love to fill it with modern guts.
- either the market is dysfunctional, and the niche of people wanting those devices does not meet the smartphone offer.
- or the market is even smaller than what they think, making it unsustainable.
Both can be solved with time and patience (waiting for this to happen as conditions change) — or by voting with your wallet and making this requirement have priority over others (security, updates, quality, performance, compatibility, etc.).
The market's push towards larger devices is making e-ink 'dumb' phones increasingly appealing for me.
Odd UX that can't be configured (and no idea why). For example, if you touch the power button, it'll unlock and wake up the phone. There's no way to turn that off and require a click. Other android phones can but not minimal. like what the hell was going through their decision making process?
I'm resigned to getting a new iPhone in Sept - reluctantly.
Also I think China makes 3-4" android phones but they're mostly a joke spec wise
Like the OP, I switched from Android (Pixel 3a) to an iPhone SE 3 specifically for the smaller form factor. After using it for over a year, I've found the trade-offs in battery life and camera quality are too significant for my daily use.
These limitations aren't an issue when I'm at home or my desk with easy access to a charger. However, they become acute the moment I'm out for the day. For example, using GPS for navigation or connecting Bluetooth accessories becomes a liability. I can't rely on the phone to last. Also, photos are noticeably more pixelated, and the quality drop-off is clear compared to larger, contemporary phones.
This thread is evidence that the niche for small phones exists. But it's for people willing to accept these compromises by carrying a dedicated camera, a power bank, and using wired peripherals. For me and as the market suggests for most consumers, small phones just doesn't work out as reliable all-in-one devices. I'll probably wait till early next year to pick up one of the new iPhones after they iron out the initial kinks.
A weird correlation I’ve observed is that many tech savvy designer folks have iPhone mini’s. I think partly because they do their main work on a computer and don’t lean on their phones as much.
- a 3.5mm jack
- fingerprint sensor on the back
and it's an immediate buy for me, (almost, but not really) regardless of price!
The Pixel 4 had a 5.6" screen and it feels like the local maxima of mobile phone design. Ran GrapheneOS perfectly too.
The small size and clean stock Android were the main reasons I bought this, and it's still a great phone.
By the way, Apple is horribly behind in this area. It is time for them to realize that not everybody wants the same form factor. And people are getting bored by Apple's run-of-the-mill designs.
The slab form factor is excellent industry design; modern efforts to integrate a hardware-keyboard, i. e. in a non-detachable way, are quite frankly daft. It buys the worst of both worlds: added complexity and error-proneness, more (dead) weight, awkward handling, harder maintainability/repairability, etc.
The form factor that was represented by Psion-machines such as the 3- or 5-series was great at the time, but is now obsolete, as evidenced by Planet Computers' recreations. Integrated sliders (e. g. F(x)tec) are only marginally better.
Technically, the solution of course is very elegant and simple:
1. Slab-form factor UMPC/smartphone 2. Corresponding detachable (as "attachable folder"), roughly Psion 5-sized keyboard a similar 3. Small "click-in" keyboard dock à la Pinephone keyboard or a 4. Detachable slider
But that is indeed just one variable in the whole equation; there's a whole set of features I consider essential for a smartphone- or UMPC-like device that one doesn't find anymore.
There are so many Android phone models, but not a single one that's a reasonable size?
I like the idea of the folding flip style phones (Galaxy Flip) though and hope Apple makes one of those!
That is another idea which apple didn't like.
I have multiple screen with me, so my 13 mini is great.
Pixel 9 (2024) = 6.3 inches.
I know the Pixel 9 is not that small, but is close and an excellent phone (base or Pro models, the XL is bigger).
