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Comment by montroser | Hacker News Reader

This is cool as an option. But, why oh why mustn't we have any 5 inch Android phone on the market? It's not as if there's no demand, as evidenced by iPhone SE on the iOS side. The last real Android choice was the Pixel 4a and beyond that, everything has been mega huge.

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There isn't that much demand on the Apple side. Apple discontinued the iPhone mini because they weren't selling.

The iPhone SE's popularity is driven by price, not the demand for a smaller phone. The iPhone SE is 5% taller and wider than an iPhone mini. People didn't buy the iPhone mini at $100 cheaper than an iPhone. If they were going to settle for a smaller phone, they wanted half-off.

It allows Apple to be in the $400 market by putting out a device that won't compete with the regular iPhone. If Apple offers an iPhone SE sized device at $700, people don't want it. iPhone SE buyers mostly want a larger phone - they just don't want to pay for it.

I love the iPhone mini, but people didn't want a small phone. They wanted a cheaper phone. I'd love it if this weren't the case. I do want a 5" phone, but when Apple put out a 5" phone, people wouldn't buy it. They'll only buy it if you price it at half-off.

Reading this post... I think that probably the mini's failures are due to it being so much more than the SE, but people wanting smaller screens are also people "OK" with less tech in the phone as well. SE likely canabalized the mini sales way too much.

The main hope for the future would be the SE getting the 12 mini form factor... but then Apple probably would be worried about it canabalizing bigger phone!

seems obvious that there is a small group of people who will pay for a premium small iPhone, priced the same as regular sized phone

> The iPhone SE's popularity is driven by price, not the demand for a smaller phone. The iPhone SE is 5% taller and wider than an iPhone mini.

seems like you are talking about the "new se" models, not the original one that everyone wants.

>Apple discontinued the iPhone mini because they weren't selling.

I've read somewhere that they sold several millions of them in the US alone. Is that not enough to make a profit?

But I think they could sell it with a slower CPU (cheaper) and it would still be fine. People who want a smaller phone probably have a computer at home.

There certainly was some market for a small phone, although how much is beyond my current knowledge. It's definitely a niche market segment.

I think Apple's misstep was to make it a small version of the yearly models rather than a nicer version of the SE. The SE is on a 2-3 year cadence rather than yearly, and the hardware in the 2022 SE is very similar to the 13 mini. So I think the angle should have been to market the SE in 2 flavors: the current "Touch ID" model with hella bezels for US$429, and a "Face ID" model (the "mini") for US$499 or $529.

It could keep just the single camera, notch instead of "Dynamic Island," no MagSafe, worse screen and glass, etc.

This wouldn't eat into the market for the more expensive models while still delivering enough performance for most people. Sure it wouldn't please the "literal flagship, but smol" crowd, but would have reduced engineering and make inventory easier.

Even on the Apple side there doesn't seem to be that much demand, as demonstrated by the fact that the SEs are just iterations on old iPhone tooling (currently the iPhone 8) rather than brand new compact designs, and the size of the SE has crept upwards as they moved it to newer tooling. I think the motive behind the SE has more to do with cost optimization than size, it just happens that the cheapest way to make an iPhone is to refresh one of the older iPhones, which incidentally were smaller, as was the style at the time.

Also, the iPhone minis did not really fly, apparently.

God, I wish "not being wanted by at least 100M people" didn't disqualify products from existing.

I mean, it disqualifies products from existing at reasonable price points.

because we made the rules as such, not because of a universal/natural law

Comment further down the thread mentioned the upcoming Jelly Star Max. Looks like it is exactly what you look for.

https://www.unihertz.com/pages/new?utm_source=twitter&utm_me...

Another comment said they are shoddy at best at updates as in they just don't. You might not want an Android phone for daily usage i.e. your main phone i.e for banking apps etc which is not regularly updates and upgraded.

Well hey, that does look interesting! I wonder what the screen resolution will be, and whether it will actually make it to market. But either way, nice that there might be something in the works.

It's going to have a 5" screen, but quite thick at 15mm. A similar (but thinner) size phone is the Qin 3 Ultra.

As an owner of a Samsung Galaxy S22, which is not small but seemed to me like the only sane size - feature - price balance on the Android market back then: maybe the reason is battery life?

I'm really underwhelmed by the one of the S22. I barely get a day out of it. When I'm travelling with Google Maps, I have to carry a power bank.

Maybe current android phones are just optimized so bad in comparison to iPhones? And increasing device size allows for a proportionally larger battery size.

Surely with modern processor efficiency, they could get similar or better battery life as small phones of the 2010s? Thinking lovingly of the form factor of the 2013 Moto X.

Yes! That first generation Moto X was the premature peak of the small Android phone. After that everything just got bigger and increasingly less beautiful.

The Moto X 2013 was awesome. It already had some modern smartphone features (AMOLED, always listen phrase) And it was so comfortable in-hand. The Moto X 2014 was already a pretty big regression in that regard (then Lenovo bought Motorola from Google and updates went down the drain as well).

Most likely you have the Exynos CPU? I upgraded from a S21 Ultra (Exynos) to a S23 Ultra (Snapdragon).

Battery life is so much better. I use the 80% battery protection option and nearly always make it through the day. Only if I constantly watch videos the battery is flat in the evening.

With power saving and 100% battery I can reach 2 1/2 to 3 days. Loving it.

Doesn't have to be Exynos. The US version has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which had heating and battery drain issues. The Gen 2 solved these issues.

The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 solved it by switching to a better TSMC node. The Gen 2 increased performance (on the same node) and got again somewhat less efficient.

The Asus Zenphone 9 is basically the same size, and two years into it I still average 25-45% battery usage from rising to sleeping for the night. GSam says average per complete battery charge is 2d 16.2h, and Screen On is 11h 58m with an observed maximum of 8 hours 30m.

So battery life and a smallish phone are completely compatible with each other.

The S22 is notorious for the poor battery life. The S23, for example, is pretty much the same size, faster, and the battery lasts significantly longer.

It's hard to rail against market forces, where bigger seems to mean prosperity.

The same model of SUV is always bigger as time goes on, and there seems to be no small pickups anymore.

I've always wondered if modest people buy used devices and cars, and don't have a say in what new ones are like.

Old (er) people spend a lot of money. Old(er) people want larger screens and bigger cars because they're easier to overcome physical issues (sight and dexterity).

This is my theory.

> Old (er) people spend a lot of money.

Still blows my mind that this is like that in countries that didn't go through a 70-year period of socialism.

Anyway, old people don't buy smartphones as much, at least from my observations. They still only use a phone for calls, so why bother? There exist dumb phones with large buttons and simple large UIs specifically for older people.

It means prosperity in the sense that the manufacturer is taking you to the cleaners by eliminating smaller low-end and mid-range products to funnel you into higher margin "big" things, for both cars and phones.

SUVs being pushed so aggressively the US is because the margins are better and the segment is eternally protected by the Chicken Tax. The insane CAFE leniency for lardassed SUVs/"light trucks" is fought for tooth and nail because the margins on SUVs (especially full-size ones) are crazy.

Same thing happened with phones. Remember when a thousand dollar phone was stupid? Now that's what shit gets developed on, tested on, etc. It's just normal, and that's great for people who make phones.

Not enough modest people exist to really make an impact in sales numbers and even if they did, they don't really drive any more sales. I know multiple people that are very well off, money in the bank, with a nice house, multiple very nice (enthusiast) cars, that just don't give off the same FOMO effect as somebody in a shitload of debt living in a McMansion driving around a shiny new Navigator.

1000 dollar phone is still stupid. You can easily get a laptop with more functionality for way cheaper.

There was the zenphone 9/10 in the same size, which also sold poorly enough that the 11 is a regular huge phone. Other than the same thousands (not even millions) of us complaining online year after year there's just no demand.

Zenphone 9 was marketed as small, but it's exactly the same size as a normal iPhone 13/14/15.

Because those of us who want a small phone likely thinks that is too big. Hell the erstwhile mini was oversized, part of why it didn’t sell so well I suspect.

3.5in and then not nearly as thick as this one, would be ideal for me. Or just keep the device size from the first couple iPhones.

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