6.3” is still huge. 5.8” is workable. And it’s not like there’s no precedent, the Zenfone 10 is also 5.8” and is adored for it.
What's extra annoying is I never felt the need to use a case when phones were smaller, but one-handed corner reaching upsets the balance of the phone in my hand now to the point where it feels like a necessity—making the phone even bigger and bulkier.
Then they released the enormous 6.8" Zenfone 11 Ultra this March, with still no indication that there will be a smaller variant. The small Zenfone 10 might not have sold well enough to justify doing another one.
Not for lack of trying, since both Apple and Samsung tried in 2019 with their mini iPhones and Galaxy S10e respectively which were both smaller versions of their normal phones. Neither line continues today.
Apple has some precedent with their premium iPad Mini which costs more than their normal iPad and gets irregularly updated, but it might be hard to market an "iPhone Mini SE Pro".
It'll never happen but I'll keep dreaming.
It's actually the opposite - big screens inevitably mean "expensive", and phones are status symbols. Unfortunately, vain people outnumber practical people by various orders of magnitude, so the market goes where the money is.
The only way to correct this trend would be to coopt an inordinate amount of celebrities, and make them advocate for smaller phones. That's the only group that vain people will blindly follow.
I suspect in practice we're stuck with big phones until the phone concept actually manages to disappear entirely (turning into wearables or lenses).
My wife inherits my phones, and when I first switched to the iPhone "Max" size, she thought they were ridiculously, impractically large and was reluctant to switch. But after she had used it for a month or two, she couldn't go back, having that big screen is just too nice. For watching video, looking at photos, reading text, etc.
Adoration alone does not pay salaries. At the end of the day the manufacturers are businesses looking to generate as large a profit as possible (some even want to build the best tech possible while doing so), so as much as any of us may adore one feature or another, the only thing that really matters is sales volume and the resulting profits.
If they hadn't disabled the ability to root the device, I would've bought one.
Everyone keeps talking about wanting small phones, but when the time to pull the wallet comes, there's always an excuse.
Nexus 7: 198.5 x 120 x 10.5 mm, 340 g
Pixel 9 XL: 162.8 x 76.6 x 8.5 mm, 221 g