On the one hand I love my fold 3. On the other I miss my pre. That thing was great except the terrible slider.

I have very small hands. Like smaller than children’s sized. I though the same until my boyfriend got me an s29 ultra and at first I thought it was ridiculously large but I’ve had it since launch and anything smaller now feels cramped. I tried using his pixel once and it felt barely usable to me. I mean I’ve user the iPhone 4s and a honor 6x and at the time I thought they were fine but just the extra height on my current phone leaves me with a whole phone worth of space when typing. I used to hate how much screen real estate the keyboard took up. It’s definitely useful to have smaller phones for a more utilitarian perspective. I’m that case though I’d rather have a bar or flip phone with a very long battery life and at most a black lcd screen or something. Sometimes I think id rather have my phone separate from my portable internet device.

This is something I don’t really understand. People will always talk about how smaller phones don’t sell well, but there are a lot of products that are aimed at much smaller niches and do very well, but barely any company creates phones for that niche.

The only one I know is cubot, a chinese brand who makes the cubot pocket, the king kong mini, and the cubot j10. I hope they succeed and consolidate the small smartphone niche.

Agreed. I went from pixel 3a to 6a and thought okay this is definitely as big as I’m willing to use but prefer the smaller 3a size.

Big phones sell though, that’s the issue. Apple sold the mini version of the iphone right alongside the bigger models and it sold like shit. The people who want smaller phones are in a minority.

Unihertz, interesting, thanks!

I’m generalising here and obviously it won’t apply to everyone, but I tend to think most people with small phones look at huge phones and say “whoa, too big” and thus never bother to give it a go. People with large phones either love them already, or they love the idea of a small phone — so they go get one, and in most cases, immediately miss their large phone.

Of course, some people have experienced both formats enough to know that they definitely prefer small phones — but, unfortunately, they appear to be a minority. Small phones don’t sell well, or else there’d be more of them. And so, these people fall into that all-too-common market category ‘You’re Not Significant Enough’.

All that said, it absolutely depends on what you want from your phone. I use my S23 Ultra to edit photos and videos, play a few games, get some work done — and all of those things benefit from a big display. Hell, even typing is easier for me on a big screen, thanks to my sausage thumbs. 😂

Not possible at the moment. Without the large size, you can’t fit an adequate battery to last a day or longer.

Not to mention that many people want good cameras on their phone, an they need space as well.

20 years ago these were great. Now? Ye gods I’m too old for that tiny stuff.

I’m a big guy, with big hands.

Got the s22 ultra, and it feels like it’s finally a me sized phone. I’ve been fighting tiny phones for decades!

In the end, we need a range from small to large.

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S23 because of the “small factor”. Love it. I’m tired of huge phones, they are clunky, heavy and overall unnecesary.

I switched to a Pixel 7 today from a Xiaomi Android phone. I always felt my existing phone was too big, and when looking for a new one the first thing I did was go to gsmarena and search for a phone released relatively recently with a smaller screen. Literally the only result was the Iphone SE.

The Pixel phone is practically the same size, just a tad smaller and just a tad heavier. But there is a significant difference in the gesture support, which is usually something I don’t bother with. The result is that the basic system navigation and app switching can be done with my right hand only, in its normal holding position. The swipe from the left to go back a screen can be done from the bottom of the screen, so I don’t need to stretch my thumb up and across to do it from the middle of the screen.

Stretching unnaturally is still required to swipe down from the top of the screen, or I guess if third party app design puts buttons in the top left. But as a software solution to this hardware problem which also preserves the larger screen size for cases where that’s useful or desired, I think it’s pretty good.

The comments section of a post like this feels like early reddit. Love it!

I adored my Pixel 3a. The size was perfect in my opinion. Small enough to handle with one hand and to put it in my pockets, big enough to enjoy watching videos on it. The Samsung S10e was lovely too.

I don’t have sources but I remember them stating that small form factor phones were not selling too well. So I guess we won’t see many flagship or even midrange phones in the near future.

Why do people prefer smaller phones? Like I use a realme 7. So not small but I don’t feel like it’s massive. And ths screen is nice if I want to watch a video or play a game. I feel like with more people using their phone as a primary computing device they will be bigger to accommodate that. Genuinely interested in why people prefer smaller phones

Unironically if there was enough demand they would be made. Even the iPhone mini failed in market penetration, not to mention things like the Sony compacts and the Zenfones.