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Comment by thund | Hacker News Reader

Around 2000-2005 there was a race for the smallest phone with ludicrously small displays. I believe Nokia was kind of leading and “winning” the race. Then blackberry and iPhone reversed trajectory and suddenly bigger was better, and Nokia died out.

I think we are on the same path here, thinner is not what I want. I want a powerhouse that can run AI for at least 48 hours on the worst conditions, a week at least in an ideal scenario.

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My memory is from around 1998-1999 when I did some research to buy my first phone. From memory, I think that at that point Ericsson was winning that race in the more affordable end of the market, with models that I remember being smaller than Nokia models from the same time, such as:

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_pf_768-108.php

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_t10s-115.php

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_gf_788e-110.php

And Motorola had the smallest/lightest phones at the premium end of the market, with the StarTAC line.

* https://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_gf_788e-110.php

* https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_startac_85-74.php

In the end I realised that size was not the most important factor for me so instead I got a Motorola 8700 [1] which I didn't enjoy using, then sold it shortly after to get a Nokia 5110 [2] which I liked very much.

[1] https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co80944...

[2] https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5110-7.php

The one I have more vivid memories of is Nokia 8210, pretty small

https://www.businessinsider.com/drug-dealers-are-buying-noki...

https://photogallery.indiatimes.com/gadgets/phones/most-icon...

Yes I forgot about Ericsson, same era.

Funny how these are now classified dumb phones, while they have some odd niche market yet :-)

You want a phone that can run an LLM for a week uninterrupted? Wouldn't that weigh like 4 lbs and require a backpack to carry around?

Somehow I don't think you're the demographic Apple is interested in.

It wouldn’t weigh 4lbs if Apple invested on that research. Who really cares about this much thin phones really, Apple is out of ideas, far from revolutionary anymore. They have the hardware to run LLMs, they should invest on batteries and inference quality and consumption with SLMs, rather than delegate AI to Gemini and ChatGPT…

Well both of the Pro models increased their battery life. Apple isn't going just one way.

Agree, but by how much on the Pro models? Shouldn’t we expect twice the battery duration every 24 months at least?

Based on what understanding of battery chemistry and technology?

Based on what history of any other battery powered device where that has happened?

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