I’m currently in the market for a new phone because Samsung ended security updates for my current one, not because there’s anything wrong with it. And I’m noticing that my choices seem to be buy a phablet or buy a total POS.
Remember when Samsung made a flagship phone in multiple sizes, and then also made a giant phone so big it had a built-in stylus? It wasn’t that long ago. Now the flagship phone comes with a stylus.
You may want to take a look at Fairphone if you want a phone that gets updates for a long time. The current one will be supported at least until 2028, maybe 2031.
I’d love to get a fairphone, but the 4 is only available on T-Mobile (or it’s MVNOs) which doesn’t work for me, and the 5 has no plans for a US release.
It still exists, just not for us consumers. How else they gonna force us to use the newer networks that cost so much to build.
2G is now available only to commercial entities using it for data connections for remote reporting stuff. Oil fields still use it for SCADA reporting, for example.
I had it flashed with LineageOS and would still legitimately use it as a daily driver if its charge would last longer than it takes for me to disconnect it from the charger and bring it outside my doorstep.
I had also bought a replacement battery but it was still so old that it barely made any difference.
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).
I remember the last time this got brought up and I complained about my thumb not being able to reach the other side of the iphone 3 mini. Well, I tried the Samsung Z Fold the other day and I really like how narrow it is to the point where my thumb can effortly reach the other side when the phone is folded. Perhaps I’ll get that phone in the future when my current iPhone 13 mini dies. At the same time, I do enjoy my Apple Watch though and I appreciate the longetivity of the iPhone compared to other brands.
My friend got the original galaxy fold and kept it until this year when she bought a fold5. She still has the original fold as a backup phone, too. I’m not sure longevity is necessarily a worry, by that metric.
I got the fold 3 and the one thing that suprised me above everything else is how sturdy the phone is. How durable it is. Ive had it for just over 2 years and i domt think i will upgrade when the contract ends. Its exactly what i need and is still working perfectly without a scratch on it.
It’s a nice idea, but I’d be worried about the wear and tear on the folding screen. I can’t imagine it would hold up through the years of use I put phones through.
Have the new Z Fold after years of owning borderline-phablets and the usability is much better. My previous phone (Galaxy S20+) felt too big and painful to use one-handed, yet typing with two hands felt awkward. This splits the use cases. Slim one-hand phone on the outside. Mini-tablet typing monster on the inside. 🤌
The #a line is usually a bit smaller then the flagships. The 4a was the perfect size. 3a was huge compared to it. 6a is slightly larger than the 4a. The 6 is massive compared to the 6a
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’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?
Same, holding on for dear life with my S10E. It’s the best form factor, great power button finger print reader, dual SIM, I mean, what’s not to love. (battery is kind of meh, but I’ve added a halo ring and a magnetic induction battery).
What’s the point of a small phone if you’re going to stick a big battery to it?
My phone is big, but I don’t need an external battery. I’m curious to see the size and weight comparison between my phone with a big built in battery, and your phone + battery combo.
I want a smaller smartphone but not an iPhone. It’s sad that Apple is the only manufacturer still producing reasonable sized phones. Small phone gang unite and push for other manufacturers to follow Apple on this one!
Yea i wanted iPhone mini as well but it’s hard for me to miss abilities such as using OG Firefox (not some stupid skinned safari) with ublock origin and NewPipe.
Unfortunately even Apple has announced they are discontinuing their smaller phone, citing poor sales, so it seems the small phone gang is too small to have any market power.
They don’t want to make a product. They say “consumers don’t like it”. You ask for evidence. They say it’s confidential, or they deliberately sabotage the availability of the product and say, “see?”
So you have no alternative theory, but you’re just assuming Apple are lying about their reason because they won’t share their company data that led them to that conclusion?
You said they are just saying it’s poor sales, but it actually isn’t the reason. That would make their posted reason a lie.
If marketing is not based in reality, yes, it is lying, and there is nothing toxic about calling it what it is. There is plenty of dishonest marketing out there, and some of it is even legal. But I would hardly call a discontinuation announcement “marketing” since you’re literally doing the opposite of trying to sell them the product. You’re telling them they can no longer buy the product.
Could partly be that they don’t want to support the development effort. Fewer phone sizes to support means they can get away with fewer staff working new versions of ios.
ASUS has denied a previous report about the possible shutdown of the Zenfone division. The company issued a press statement, rubbishing claims from a Taiwanese media outlet that reported that the Zenfone 10 would be the last flagship in the Zenfone line.
If it is actually a larger demographic, then it would be huge opportunity for any of these other phone makers, especially those that are struggling. I highly doubt they are all unaware of the opportunity to make a smaller phone, so I suspect they have stayed away because they don’t think it will be a profitable market.
As production quantities go down, costs go up, and with the lower prices that these vendors sell at compared to Apple, their margins are already much thinner, so they have much more risk than Apple in introducing a smaller phone unless they are confident there is a large enough market for it. They simply have much less wiggle room than Apple in which to create a profitable product out of a smaller phone. Since Apple is pulling out and the others haven’t even bothered to try to compete with them in the decade that this big phone trend has been trending, I don’t think there’s any other conclusion that we can draw other than the small phone market is not large enough to pursue, but I’m open to other possibilities.
Edit: Someone else mentioned the small Asus Zenphone, which was also discontinued due to poor sales. That means at least one other manufacturer tried to make a small phone, and they came to the same conclusion that Apple did, so I see even less reason to doubt them.
ZenFone isn’t small, it’s the same size as a regular iPhone/Pro, not the Mini, so I can’t see it proving anything about small phone demand that couldn’t equally be applied to a regular iPhone or S23 etc. It also isn’t discontinued.
I was going to say that the Mini should be pretty cheap now that it’s two generations old – the 13 is down to $629 new, after all, and the Mini ought to be $100 cheaper…
But it looks like Mini demand has actually driven prices much higher than the normal 13. Strange, almost as if there IS demand for small phones…
Right, but I’m pretty sure they never said anything about discontinuing it altogether when the iPhone 14 came out, and most people just assumed they were just skipping a year on it. It wasn’t until right before they released the 15 lineup that they said the smaller phone was actually discontinued.
They never officially discontinued the mini line in the first place. They just didn’t release new models after the 13. The announcement that they discontinued it was that they were discontinuing production of the 13 mini, which they had kept making alongside the regular 13 after the 14 lineup was released. Up until the release of the 15s, you could still buy the 13 mini new from Apple. Discontinuing the 13 mini killed off any way to buy one new.
There’s still strong rumors that they might use the mini frame for the next SE model. It has pretty close to the same external dimensions as the 3rd gen SE, but would bring more screen real estate in the same package since it would be edge to edge instead of have the bezels. And it would also fit the rumored “release a mini every few years” strategy since they only release an SE every couple of years anyway.
The SE cannibalized mini sales because, for the most part, people that wanted the smaller size cared more about price than features, and the SE was the same size and quite a bit cheaper. Replacing the old iPhone 8 based SE with an iPhone mini based SE would kill two birds with one stone. It would let them use up a bunch of the excess stock they have laying around due to the poor sales, would bring the mini to a lower price point which would make it more popular, and would remove the competition between the SE and the mini.
Yeah, we’re saying the same thing, but for the sake of brevity, I might have spoken in a way that led you to believe I’m saying something else. I did not know about the rumors of the new SE using the mini frame, so that is some slightly good news for the small phone gang.
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