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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. I just got a new phone last week and after a bunch of research ended up settling on a Pixel 3a, which is even larger than the already-too-large 1st gen Pixel that it replaced. I hate it. There are no decent small (<5") phones on the market, and haven't been for half a decade. Sony's Xperia Compact line was the closest, but it 1) doesn't come with stock Android, 2) doesn't have a headphone jack, and 3) has been discontinued, which I guess indicates that these don't sell. Sigh.

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> There are no decent small (<5") phones on the market,

True.

> and haven't been for half a decade.

The iPhone SE is less than 5 years old, and it's terrific. I've had mine for nearly three years and I just got the battery replaced. I'm not sure I'd buy an SE new today if I needed a new phone, but I'm going to hold onto it until it dies or another good small phone comes out.

I have an SE as well, but the camera is a potato, roughly on par with $200 Android phones from 3 years ago. Ok outside with good lighting, but a muddy mess everywhere else.

I also find typing on it to be much more inaccurate than larger phones (even with swipe typing).

The battery life and everything else is great, though.

I just bought a "new" SE refurbished for $100. It's still fantastic and runs iOS 13 marvelously. It's really your only option for a small device that runs a modern phone OS.

> There are no decent small (<5") phones on the market

This is a major reason behind why I've stuck with my iPhone 5S since the end of 2013. Unfortunately, after 6 years, the battery life is now really suffering, and it's starting to feel a little sluggish. Up until the last 6 - 12 months it's been a great phone though.

An SE would be good for you if you can find a used one for a good price. It has the guts of the 6s in the body of the 5s so it should last you a few more years at least

I was surprised to discover recently that you can still buy a new (not reconditioned) iPhone SE direct from Apple but the link to them is on the refurbished part of the site.

All I'm seeing here: https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/iphone is X's. Did you find the SE somewhere else on the site?

FWIW. Newer 5" screens have had their bezels shrunk down so some are as small as a typical 4.7" phone.

The Pixel 3a has teeny tiny bezels, and now my fingers accidentally activate stuff at the screen edges while I'm holding it. This is progress, I guess.

The Pixel 2 is almost perfect, and I have no real problems with it, although I'm not sure if I'll ever stop missing my beloved Nexus 5X. That phone was perfect in every way, except for some fatal flaw that randomly killed it. It was made from durable plastics and light enough that it didn't easily damage itself when dropped. All the current thin, dense phones made of painted metal will show permanent scars from almost any physical interaction with another solid surface.

Then you'll _really_ love the Galaxy S9 with the curved edges, where the natural resting spot for your fingers is on the curved edges of the actual screen.

There is excellent touch rejection on the edges when the contact patch originates from the edge. You can even customize touch rejection with a good lock plugin.

It doesn't work when you're using a case. I regret buying Samsung.

The Nexus 5 is an amazing phone around that size, although the newest AOSP that they'll run is Hammerhead and it's EOL as far as official security updates go.

I went straight from an iPhone SE to a Pixel 3a. I was really sad to give up my tiny screen.

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