- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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I’m not gonna lie, as a 6’4" guy, I can’t stand small phones. I understand that I’m an outlier though, and wish there were more options to cater to more people.
When are we finally going to get curved phones on some kind of bracer? They wear them in every futuristic movie, we finally have curved screens, and no one’s made one for wearing on your forearm yet.
Sounds like a big smart watch.
And I’m not sure how useful the Pip-Boy format would be. Now you’ve got a device that still requires both arms to use, but you can only use one hand…
Exactly. I wish at least the smart watches were 2-3x wider to be more useful. Maybe just give us some kind of arm dock that curves the device when attached, and flattens when removed for more hands on stuff.
Because they’re fucking stupid.
I can pick up a phone in either hand and type on it using only that hand, and I can play games using both hands at once. If I’m using a bracer, it means I can’t do anything else with either hand or use my off hand to interact with it.
The only problem a bracer solves is not having pockets, but even then you still need to wear a bracer.
Honestly sounds like a benefit. Could help battle phone addiction.
Bracer if unbreakable could be decent to use a gadget for industry applications, I think. Easier to check the screen, without keeping one of your arms off to do so
More than one company has gotten to the prototype stage. Don’t remember any huge companies, but there’s video out there. You don’t realize how much the form factor sucks until it’s real.
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By that logic everyone should buy a foldable
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I would, if long term durability is not a concern and the price is not too damn expensive.
Basically if money is no issue.
I would if they were more durable, easier to repair and cheaper…
Too small, can’t phone
I’m just waiting for smart watches to get bigger and bigger and eventually lose the strap.
I think it’s a psychological thing.
Like, while thinking about what kind of phone we want - a small phone sounds pretty good. But when it comes time to buy it, we start comparing phones, and we see some small ones, and some slightly bigger ones, and some really big ones. We tend to go bigger than we’d originally intended because of psychological anchoring effects.
The slightly bigger phone is seen as a slightly better phone. “not too big” we think, as we compare it to some monsters; and the key stats such as screen resolution and battery capacity sound slightly better. So we tend to buy that bigger phone even if it isn’t what we actually thought we wanted.
[edit] I should say that I’m saying “we” in a totally generic way. I definitely don’t do this myself. I’ve literally only ever owned smartphone in my life, and it isn’t particularly big or flashy. I have an anti-phone attitude.
Porn. Next question
i have a 6a and i think its about the optimal size. not too small, not too big.
by the way, my first post on here… how is this different to reddit?
Why can’t we have both? I want a bigger phone. Bigger than what I have now, and many people would consider this to be a fairly large phone.
But I don’t want to stop people who want smaller phones from having those, too.
Yep, got big hands myself and own an S21+, and the keys on the keyboard are still too fucking small. Sick of correcting nytypos after 10 years, so finally not giving a fuck.
Ironically, i typed this entire comment without a typo, gotta love how that works.
Edit: oh wit, found onr. Guess y’all just gotta deal with ut.
If you’re not using Swype or whatever it’s called on gboard give it a shot. I have dumb fingers and I can text in my work gloves.
Oh yeah buddy, been using swiftkey for idk 6 years but I’m not in the habit of using it most of the time because half the words I swipe come out the wrong word 😄
Right? Everybody has different size hands, my hands are on the larger side and these bigger phones of today are actually pretty comfortable to me
I am a very average-sized woman with average-sized hands, and big phones would have been unusable for me. Seems like they’re all for big men’s palms.
I have fairly small hands, but still prefer a larger phone. More content on the screen and space for battery.
HOWEVER, I’d take both. A small phone would be a good secondary device. I want something modern the size of my Samsung Galaxy Ace (GT-S5830i). The back also has a really nice texture.
Oh, yeah, it also has a headphone jack, MicroSD card slot and quickly swappable battery which I should probably replace because it seems it has slightly increased its capacity… volumetric capacity.But I also prefer a bit more thickness so it doesn’t feel like a fragile, slippery sheet of glass (rugged phones are good for that).
You can already get big phones though.
They’re saying the smartphone market is too homogenous and there should be more options so that people actually have a choice in the device they buy.
Yeah, but most cries (including this article) aren’t “We want both” but “We want small instead”. The article goes out of its way to ridicule “huge” phones.
The battle cry seems to be demanding it their way instead of variety.
IDK, i have Big hands, so using those was a pain for me lmao.
Because most people don’t buy them?
It’s like asking “Man, why don’t they make slider phones anymore?” (and I loved my slider phone).
As a lover of small phones, unfortunately that’s the truth. Apple tried a couple years ago with their iPhone mini and sold very few. Still, there should be enough of us that maybe some smaller phone manufacturers could fill this niche.
And maybr make it fully unlocked and repairable, replaceable battery, etc. while they’re at it.
Did I overlook the sales numbers? Do they exist?
You’re right, I thought I remembered that article giving actual figures but instead it just handwavily says they didn’t sell many.
So, here is one that actually quotes a number, 3% of the whole iPhone lineup: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopular-march-quarter/
And another: https://www.cultofmac.com/news/iphone-13-mini-makes-up-a-tiny-percentage-of-apple-sales
And another, this one says 5% for some reason: https://www.notebookcheck.net/iPhone-13-Mini-sales-continue-to-disappoint-as-rumors-claim-the-iPhone-14-Mini-may-be-axed.593194.0.html
Either way 3% - 5% is a small number for Apple (or Samsung, or…) which might not justify making a small phone, but in absolute numbers, thats actually a lot of people! A smaller manufacturer should definitely be able to profitably fill this niche…
There is no option to buy them. That’s the point.
Would you pay $1000 for one? Economy of scales matters…
Plus everyone who did look at them would say it is smaller it should cost less! Even though a smaller phone would be more technically challenging to build. Next you have compromises. No matter what you take out to make it work. People would bitch, I need that! I don’t need this other thing! Next battery life, people complain about current battery life, you think they want less?
I could go on, but I can easily see why manufacturers don’t want to deal…
obviously they did exist. why do you think phone manufacturers would stop making them if they were as profitable as the other sizes?
Zenfone 8 and 9 are valid options, I’m using one rn
I’m probably gonna annoy people with this but I will shout it from the rooftops
Unihertz makes one.
Why does it need to the most people buying them. Why can’t it be a minority?
Because cell phones are a business. If not enough people buy a format, it dies out.
See: Rotary phones.
That’s right. The market has spoken, and unfortunately it has said it doesn’t want small phones. Personally, I still do though.
I don’t think it’s the consumer market. It’s more expensive to manufacture with physical controls, keyboards, and moving parts. It wasn’t lack of consumer demand that killed the phono jack.
you could get a Unihertz Jelly Star like me
Making a small phone is harder than making a big phone.
Here’s what I want, roughly in order of priority:
- long term OS support
- repairable
- privacy friendly
- small
I currently have a Pixel 8:
- 7 years software support, maybe more
- 6/10 on ifixit score; not great, but better than many
- supports GrapheneOS
- on the smaller end of “normal” today
A community-supported Linux phone would be awesome, since I’d get 1 and 3 by default and 2 by convention, but they don’t meet my minimum needs from a phone: reliable basic feature support. Hopefully we get there by the time my Pixel dies.
I’m using a Pixel 5. Replaced the screen and battery recently because there’s no modern option for me. My thumb will be able to reach all corners of the screen in one hand operation or I’m just not buying it. I’d probably be better off without a phone anyway.
And notably the pixel 8 is significantly smaller than the 7
You might be interested in the fairphone
The Fairphone is interesting, but it is also enormous unfortunately
My main complaint is that they don’t directly support the US. There’s a reseller here, but I think there are issues with some bands.
Maybe it’ll be better the next time I need a phone.
Plus they don’t support GrapheneOS. (or rather, GrapheneOS doesn’t support them due to it being too expensive to support more than one model while also not having the same hardware integrity measures that Pixels have) It’s the only thing stopping me from getting them for my next phone, because while I don’t necessarily need the fastest processor, highest resolution screen, etc, I do need a phone that won’t break over time until it becomes useless in a few years.
I’d be fine with /e/OS I think, GrapheneOS is nice, but not a hard requirement for me.
Well, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I can’t go back because they don’t sell any small phones.
They do, but service providers don’t like selling them. There isn’t as much of a return on smaller/ dumb/ cheap phones. I used to work at spectrum, and we’d speak of the cheap phones in hushed tones like they were the boogeyman. It felt horrible because I was using my cheap android while selling people iPhone 15s.
So once again instead of providing choice the market is simply phasing out things with smaller profit margins as if they planned it together in some kind of cartel.
Demand also isn’t there. The iPhone SE sold ok, but the other thing to keep in mind was that it was the cheap iPhone too so it’s supposed to sell.
If it was outselling the main model every year then they’d keep making them small. But they didn’t so they got dropped.
If it was outselling the main model every year then they’d keep making them small.
Why would they do that if they make more money on the main model? It’s not like you have a choice in iOS manufacturers.
Not really, even the cheap phones have large screens now. There’s no correlation anymore between price and screen size, the cheap phones just have lower quality panels.
I’ve been maining a Unihertz Jelly Star, I quite like it.
I want one. Can you put a custom ROM on them?
per @ilmagico@lemmy.world in another comment here:
The old jelly pro had a decent modding community, and I definitely was able to unlock the bootloader and root it, though not sure about degoogling.
Yeah, I can’t ever find modders using the new one and I’m not willing to get an old used one.
I am using Unihertz Jelly Star for more than a year now with custom LineageOS ROM. Works well with it. I used this guide to flash it: https://www.reddit.com/r/unihertz/comments/16sviga/unihertz_jelly_star_running_great_with_lineageos/
Nice. Actually logged in to save that post. Thanks
I picked the Pixel 8 because:
- it runs GrapheneOS
- It was a little smaller than the Pixel 8 Pro
If there was a smaller version available, I would’ve gotten that instead.
Is there an 8a? Those are usually the smallest model
There is. The screen is smaller, but the actual phone is bigger 🤦♂️
Wow, dumb. The last a I had was the 4a, which was notably smaller.
I’ve been using the “A” branch of the Pixel line for years now.
But I use CalyxOS so I guess you and I have to be enemies now. My name is Inigo Montoya, you use a different OS, prepare to die.
Ah man… I just installed graphene to try it … (turns around and runs)
.
Seriously though, would be nice if they could get along and share code and efforts, I’d love to try a graphene-hardened OS with sandboxed microg (instead of gsf) and datura firewall :) Maybe even have the option to have microg in one profile and google play in another. One can dream
Graphene and Calyx are two different paths to two different destinations. Graphene is for security, Calyx is for privacy.
Yep, that’s what I gather as well. I just wish we didn’t have to choose, and could get both
I picked the Pixel A because:
- It runs GrapheneOS
- It’s slightly smaller and slightly cheaper than the normal version
- The back is plastic and not glass
Glad I can use it and type on it one-handed, can’t imagine using a bigger phone.
The only A series Pixel phone smaller than the Pixel 8 was the Pixel 4a.
Pixel 8, even now that 9 is out, is still around $400 compared to 7’s already huge $300.
That point absolutely still stands.
It’s just strange that since the 4a, the 2 smallest phones Google released were both not in the a series.
I almost did, but I found the 8 used for a good price and the size difference was minimal.
I can’t trust anything made by google. It’s a company that literally makes its money capturing everything everyone does on the internet…and yet the phone they make is the ONLY phone immune to having everything captured…
Sorry. Not buying it. There will be a chip in there phoning home we’ll find out about in a decade.
I doubt that, but I respect the skepticism. I happen to trust the GrapheneOS devs to reveal if that was the case.
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I picked the Sony Xperia 1v because:
- 71mm width (similar to pixel 8)
- Flagship specs (*for 2023 - Snapdragon 8 gen2 / 12gb)
- not Google Samsung or Apple
- little to no bloatware
- Decent cameras
- SD card expandable
- Headphone jack 3.5mm (though I haven’t used it yet)
- No glass back (and solid build quality allround)
- LineageOS support (for when vendor support runs out)
- I got a good refurb deal in 2024
I was considering a Zenphone 10 or Xperia 5 v - mainly for size and brand reasons as above - when i found this for £650
I picked the 5ii for similar reasons at the time.
The problem is it only gets 2 years of support, so I haven’t gotten an update in years. Sony is living in 2010.
The fingerprint reader slowly stopped working 6 months ago via a prolific software bug that is all over forums for xperias that will never be fixed.
The battery (even ONLY charging it to 80% using battery care) is horrific after a few years, mediocre when I got it and the standby time is shit. It loses 1.5-2% battery per hour not being used at all now. I get maybe 4h SOT browsing (much less with video).
The default camera app is crap and not even worth using…
I want to try lineageOS when I get the time to see if it fixes the battery and fingerprint reader, but here in Belgium we really need access to our bank apps because almost everything is done through there.
Edit: also the xperia 1v has a glass back… https://m.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_1_v-12263.php
I upgraded to a Sony Xperia XZ2 compact last year. It has a 5" screen and decent capabilities, the only down side is it doesn’t support 5G. For a phone that’s over 5 years old, it’s probably the most recent usable phone available which actually fits in my pocket.
Seriously, don’t show me a damn tablet computer and try to sell it to me as a mobile phone. If you can’t make a compact phone then you’re not really advancing the technology, are you?
If I can’t use it one-handed (using ALL physical buttons and ALL parts of the screen), then it’s not a phone.
Seriously, this is how we used to define the difference between phones and tables - one-hand or two-hand use.
Right? I mean I’m still lamenting the loss of slider keyboards, typing on a screen is so damn unreliable that I was forced to turn on the auto-correction, which itself is highly unreliable and constantly changing real words while failing to fix the words where I hit a number instead of a letter (the word “9f” gets typed a LOT!). I use my phone for phone calls and sending texts, with a secondary usage as a GPS in my truck. If it can’t perform one of three basic tasks then what good is it?
I’m clinging to my SE. It’s the last small phone made by anyone other than Chinese no-names. I will be sad when it’s no longer viable as an option.
my Chinese tiny phone has a name, it’s the Unihertz Jelly Star. they even have a subreddit, not sure what makes you think it’s a “no name” they make a lot of phones for niches in today’s world including one with a physical qwerty keyboard.
now the fact that they’re the only company filling those niches sucks, but it’s better than nobody doing it.
Seems to not be supported by Lineage… I wonder if a more privacy-preserving OS can be installed at all? I don’t trust stock ones.
Edit: another comment here links to a Reddit post about installing a modified Lineage there - haven’t checked it yet, but seems like it IS possible!
But can it run a degoogled Android rom well?
not sure. stacking niches means there’s a good chance the answer is no though.
if it’s just a matter of specs it should be up to it, the hardware is pretty beefy for a phone, but I figure there’s more to it than that.
personally I don’t have the spoons to pour in the effort required to degoogle. the fact that the algs and few ads I see are completely irrelevant to me suggest that I have thoroughly confused them by how non-standard my internet usage is. I’m not overly concerned about the data they do get or what they do with it.
there are enough Man-Made Horrors Beyond My Comprehension™️ keeping me up at night but you do you
The old jelly pro had a decent modding community, and I definitely was able to unlock the bootloader and root it, though not sure about degoogling.
Well, how’s it supported? This is usually what kills these phones. Even brand like Xiaomi dump their non-flagship model really soon. I have one, bought as a new model, was officially supported for like a year. Great.
I’m not really sure. what happened when it was no longer officially supported?
It just stopped receiving updates, even security ones.
There was the iPhone 13 Mini. It’s adorably small. But it didn’t sell well so they stopped making the Mini line.
I’ve got a 12 mini and bought it just because it was small. Had nothing else from the apple ecosystem (altho I did buy airpods with the phone cause it had no 3.5mm jack), and still bought it just because it was small. People like to point out and laugh at how tiny the phone is, but I don’t care cause at least I don’t have to carry around half a tablet everyday. Sad to hear they discontinued the mini line, even tho I wasn’t planning on buying apple again.
I’ll use my 13 mini until I literally can’t anymore. Sadly it seems like maybe Apple will release a clamshell to get back to the pocketable size but never a mini phone again. Wish the 16e used a mini chasis
Phones became more frequently used for apps and posting which is a pain on a tiny screen. I built a pi zero powered retro console but actually using the tiny screen of about 3" makes it near impossible to read anything.
I would like to see things return to having replaceable batteries, headphones jacks and maybe slide out keys, but if I have to type and read on the same screen it’s awful nice to have some room to work with.