Android

Because contrary to the popular opinion in tech forums, bigger phones are more popular with the general public. The iPhone Pro Max is more popular than the Pro and likewise with the Galaxy S Ultra compared to the rest of the Galaxy S models. Don't believe me? Check Counterpoint or any other market research study. Granted more manufacturers should make more phones that are iPhone 16/Galaxy S25 sized as the base iPhone ends up on top of those charts every single year but it seemed like Chinese OEMs didn't want to do that until they could fit a really large battery in there. They're doing that now but it seems like global availability is limited.

Always makes me laugh when small phone users blame the lack of popularity of the mini on the iPhone SE and completely ignore the huge difference in price. Price may not be considered important in enthusiast circles but it is probably the deciding factor for a vast majority of buyers. It's also funny how the regular sized iPhone still ends up being the best selling phone in the world despite the SE being in between both sizes. Apple tried the mini experiment for two years, I wonder what's the excuse for the 13 mini being a failure despite the SE not getting an update that year. Yeah it got one in 2022 but the mini still sold abysmally compared to the rest of the lineup if you look at Q1 results.

Additionally if the SE took sales away from the mini like it's fans say then shouldn't it have taken away sales from the base iPhone as well? Yet they never make that argument and insist on coming up with even more outlandish theories like saying a Pro version would be the best selling model globally when logically it would have garbage battery life to fit the Pro models cameras. We've already seen this with the iPhone 16e as it manages to fit a significantly larger battery compared to the iPhone 14e because it has a smaller camera that occupies less space.

My mother would have trouble using a small phone at its default display scale. Large text, small screens and poorly designed UIs do not mix.

The history of large phones, from a technical standpoint:

• LTE required a lot more power than 2G/3G until efficiencies were improved, this required a larger battery to have comparable battery life, doubly so on the phones that ran two modems (mostly Verizon) one for 3G, one for 4G
• LTE required larger antennas as their low band frequencies were lower than previous cellular tech. (750MHz and later 600MHz vs 850MHz being the old lowest)
• Handset manufacturers then stopped making smaller product lines even after efficiencies improved
• People ("consumers") realized they'd rather not buy a phone, tablet, watch, computer, anal implant, and preferred to just buy one device, settling on an oversized phone was enough between phone/tablet that they only needed to waste money on one device
• The market then went, "people prefer larger phones," even though smaller phones were waning/outliers
• Tablets outside of Apple's ostensibly died, although there are a few more choices these days that aren't Apple
• Now phones have so many antennae
  • WiFi/BT (which are often shared)
  • WiFi 6 new band
  • NFC
  • Wireless charging coil
  • Ultra Wideband
  • 20 or 30 various cellular bands with 4x antennae for MIMO
  • mmWave (in America)
• Phones also have gigantic camera systems (although since Samsung gave up on 10x optical, they shrunk slightly on that platform)
• The cycle repeated itself a bit with 5G, the channels are so wide and huge, they can suck a lot of power when doing large data transfers, and also the addition of needing a separate amp/chip for 5G above sub6 as well as additional cooling
• "AI" stuff that requires more ML compute, and thus cooling and battery capacity, even though again, nobody wanted it
• All the metrics and analytics handset manufacturers constantly run on users, disabling all this alone would probably make your average phone last 3+ days

Since then, more and more people are trying to get flip phones, dumbphones, imported small phones, or giving up on phones entirely and switching to devices like the Lilygo T-Deck LoRaWAN device that has...dun dun dunnnnn....a literal BlackBerry keyboard, as people are sick of that fabled market deciding for them.

I just want Sony to re-release the Xperia XZ1 Compact with updated internals.

I'm... I'm using a flip phone

Found my blackberry torch in a drawer a while ago. Man I love that thing, great size, solid pocket ability, great keyboard.

I just want a dedicated headphone jack.

I've switched fully to a 3" Unihertz Jelly Star in September. It took A LOT of customization to get it to become the "Intent" device that I had wanted it to be. But by now, it makes all unwanted behavior sufficiently difficult while allowing all modern conveniences such as IM, payments, tickets, navigation etc.

I'll do a proper blogpost series about it some day.

If consuming content is how you want to spend your energy & lifetime, then the bigger & brighter & more-HDR-than-life the better. I hope you find happiness. But if you at some point tire of not-creating and cannot stand spending your time as a targeted money-sack, then tiny phones are a good way out.

for many it is their primary interface to the internet. I have simply come to accept that flagship phones are no longer made for me.

When my S10e finally needs to become landfill I'll be looking at e-ink phones not the latest and greatest tablet parading as a phone.

I’d be willing to bet that most people in the world want a bigger phone.

I downsized to a iPhone 15 Pro from a iPhone 13 Pro Max thinking that I wanted a smaller phone, but I find myself missing it and planning to upgrade to the larger variety come the iPhone 17 launch. Typing has been an absolute nightmare for my hands on this smaller phone. I make more mistakes and it’s uncomfortable.

I also miss the larger screen size for viewing videos, but it’s not the end of the world there since I also have an iPad and other devices better suited for videos.

But people forget how the iPhones, in particular, were criticized by a lot of people, especially on the Android side, for not having as big of phones and Apple finally caved a few years after Steve passed. I think Steve Jobs is what held back iPhones to the smaller size they had for so long.

Because most of us don't want to.

I can definitely recommend the kingkong mini

I'm still using an iPhone mini and I haven't experienced any bad layouts, broken websites, or any difficulty like that. It has the same resolution of the biggest iPhone I've ever had (iPhone X) so things are smaller, which would make it a poor fit for someone with poor vision, but for me it's an absolutely perfect phone. It's frustrating to know that the perfect phone for me could easily exist, and yet Apple will refuse to make it for me. I'll be stuck with phones I don't like for the rest of my life, it seems.

I have no problems with broken applications on my Zenfone 8

Motorola razr 2024 when closed is the perfect small phone. Almost all apps work on the small square screen.

Because you don't buy small ones.