Asus, Samsung and Sony are still making some very handy phones. Apple and Xiaomi can go suck it. Admittedly smaller phones in 2023 tend to be on the premium side, but imo they also last longer…because you don’t drop them as often.
Especially the Sony Experia 5 (I through V) is the perfect balance between an old school width where you can easily hold and use the phone in one hand but also have more space to scroll vertically. Its got a beautiful 21:9 display, so cinematoc content looks dope as well.
hey king. I’m curious what you don’t like about the software. it feels like mostly stock android and i think Asus did a good job by not loading it with bloat. what are your thoughts?
Personally I’ve just had issues with pocket mode not registering and combining that with liking tap-to-wake, lift-to-wake I ended up calling my emergency contact way too many times. Still not fixed.
Also, I thought it was standard to allow for forward/backward by long pressing the volume buttons, but that option isn’t available apparently either.
It’s battery optimization is also a bit shite to be honest, however I don’t know of any manufacturer that doesn’t run afoul when it comes to that aspect.
Minor gripes really, but it feels like it could be more polished and while the UI isn’t modified too atrociously, given the above issues I’m wary of what else they’ve modified under the hood.
Honestly, it’s a lot of little things that are coming together that other companies like Samsung are doing better. Connecting to Wifi takes ages, and if one try fails, starting the next try takes forever. Also, some apps don’t support floating windows, there are also some quality of life settings that I miss every now and then. And then there’s some other minor things that I just notice in the moment and immediately forget about again lol. But I definitely appreciate that they don’t try to push their own app store, like Samsung, for example.
God, the small phone crowd are so exhausting. The iPhone Mini. We get it, some people do like tiny phones, but as an example, for iPhone buyers that seems to be <3% of buyers. There is simply not a large enough market for them.
It’s amazing that last year when I was looking for a new phone, the one I bought was one of the smallest I could find - asus zenfone. Same physical size as my precious sony, just a few grams heavier. I’m super happy with it and ny other phone seems super huge in comparison.
I just got S23 because I wanted a flagship phone, but got tired of large phones that don’t fit in pockets properly. So far S23’s size has been really good. It’s large enough that it doesn’t get annoying to use it for a long time or read long articles, but still small enough that it’s generally more convenient to carry everywhere.
I found my old ipod touch (5th gen, 4 inch screen) in the closet and power it on yesterday. Can’t believe how small it is. I swear the screen was a lot larger when I bought it years ago. I guess my perception is skewed by modern smartphone screen size which keep getting bigger.
I’m actually using a Titan Pocket currently. Works well enough for me. The security updates are lagging behind that’s getting me considering switching back, but I’m otherwise cautious how I use it.
It’s a nice feeling device, and makes me wish they’d make more BlackBerry style phones with bigger displays and Android capability.
People see you whip the titan out and think “oh he’s doing that rollback technology thing”, then you use Android Pay and they really flip out lol.
I hope more manufacturers would adopt the Blackberry style of phones. Titan Pocket has proved that you can have Android running decently on such a device. So why not bring back QWERTY keyboards?
I really liked it when I tried my Samsung GT-S5830i again. It only has a 3.5" screen. It’s just perfect for one-handed use. And it has a home button. I miss those.
But anyway, I still probably wouldn’t choose a small phone. I prefer bigger ones overall. I really liked phablets when that was a thing. 6-7 inch screen but in 16:9 aspect ratio. For me, that’s gold, as I usually use my phone in landscape (I am typing this on phone in landscape too).
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