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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Missing microSD card support could be the major dealbreaker

And for the other guy a 3.5mm jack and for a third a physical off switch and look at that we have too many dealbreaker features for the form factor.

Power users tend to have more dealbreakers than the average consumer. Anecdotally, it seems power users prefer smaller phones. This might be what kills the small phone factor.

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I believe the bit about power users is the HN effect at work, the main customers for small phones are people with small hands and/or pockets, who are disproportionally women.

Women are also overrepresented in the Really Big Phone market, and wield them two-handed.

They also trend heavily iPhone in the US market, but that leaves plenty of alpha for the manufacturer who serves the actual market for small-form-factor Android phones.

I agree with this. Power users are a tiny market compared to “people who can’t reasonably fit a modern phone in their pocket.”

But if you have to keep your phone in a purse anyways, why not just get a big one?

So mostly the people in that market who still care are the ones who can’t or don’t want to carry a purse, which is also a smaller market. (I’m in this market though, so i am sad)

Not everyone wants a phone that they have to operate two-handed -- particularly those with small hands to begin with.

The evidence suggests that most folks do, though.

I don't, to be clear--I'm on your side here. My iPhone 11 is way too big, I just needed a new phone during that spot where the SE was long in the tooth. But people genuinely seem to like dinner plates as phones.

Again, i think the phenomenon here is similar: if you can’t even get a phone you can operate one handed properly, you may as well get a bigger screen anyways.

I’m not saying that this is people’s preferred choice, I’m saying it’s a logical decision given the choices available that seems counterintuitive from first principles (and assuming a market with real choices).

And it's been a long time since any available phone could be operated one handed by most users. An iPhone Mini isn't really one-handable either.

I am the small-phone-lover this article is addressing, and I did sign up to their list - I have an Xperia XZ1 Compact and no plans to upgrade because there's nothing to upgrade it to - but my biggest complaint about the Compact is that it's too big already. I'm a not-quite-six-foot man and I can't reach to buttons in the corners one handed. So why bother? It seems that my preference is not entirely rational after all.

This. I would be willing to bet 99.9% of the human population do not have fingers long enough to operate the iphone 13 mini completely onehanded, i.e. reach all 4 corners of the screen without letting the phone slip.

The actual market for a truly one handle-able phone is enormous. It's just not possible to fit modern phone functions into a package that small though.

Who will pay flagship prices for a phone with 3 hours of battery life?

Even the SE is rough, and my hands aren’t particularly small.

As a non-power-user, I mostly keep my phone in the pocket, where I’d like it to be small.

I’d almost go for a dumb phone, almost... but then I need emails, maps and WhatsApp.

I don’t need 50 filters, 3 cameras, razor-thin (yet somehow enormous) body, more Storage than my laptop, etc etc...

Yeah, I really wanted to ditch owning a phone at all when my last one broke but I realised that too many services require having some sort of authenticator or phone for two factor authentication. Banks literally require having a mobile phone as they will require you to authenticate transactions through their app. So I'm still chained to the damn thing.

> As a non-power-user, I mostly keep my phone in the pocket, where I’d like it to be small.

> I’d almost go for a dumb phone

But nobody makes a small dumb phone either! I'd be ok with a dumb phone, if it is small.

Android manufacturers besides Samsung already don’t make any money. The last thing they are going to do is go after an even smaller niche.

The Moto G (2013) had a microSD slot, a 3.5" port and all of it in a 4.5" form factor.

Why can't we just get an updated version of that?

I started with one of those, and every two-three years I upgrade to the most recently available one.

Over time the MotoG phones have been getting larger - to the extent that now the one I have doesn't fit in my sporran, if I go out wearing a kilt.

I love this. I propose we henceforth judge all phones by the sporran test.

It didn't have an SD card slot of any kind!

Wikipedia says it did, at least on the LTE model.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moto_G_(1st_generation)

Edit: ah found another source as well about it being on the LTE model https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Motorola-Moto-G-LTE_id8655

I definitely want a smaller phone but I don't know that I'd call myself a power user given that I use my phone less now than I have in the past 5 years - but it has been a total replacement for things like photography.

No, just do all three of those things. Add a couple millimeters to the thickness.

I disagree. I bet many average consumers would want a small phone for work, travel, etc.

IMHO vendors try not to sell small flagship phones so you have to buy a foldable phone, which is way more expensive.

> I bet many average consumers would want a small phone for work, travel, etc.

They neither say they do nor buy those which are available.

Maybe they'd like a smaller phone for a limited set of situations (though there’s no evidence of that) but they’re not going to buy two phones, so that’s not relevant.

It's like asking a single-issue voter their preference on other subjects.

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