I’m someone with relatively small hands, plus I want my phone to be on the smaller side since I prefer to use my tablet/computer/tv to watch content. But this trend where many manufacturers tend to keep futures away from smaller phones to drive people to bigger phones is driving me crazy and really makes it hard for me to buy a new phone. I can understand not having everything like maybe a periscope lens or something else that is cost etc. but not to this level. Like take Samsung for example: S24 lacks uwb, 45w, a 1440p display, has a lower amount of ram and storage. Why? Why can’t the s24 have faster charging or uwb? Why is there no 512 version and why does it have to start with 128gb storage? Is it not a flagship? It costs 949€ in my place! Why do I have to give 200€ more to get the s24+ just to get these simple features? I don’t want a bigger phone! Google does the same! No uwb, no thermometer sensor, no telephoto lens. And don’t get me started with all the software features google is keeping for the 8 pro like they don’t have the same processor. Why? Are they cheap? No they are not. I’m just really annoyed by this cause I really don’t want such a big phone.
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Reminds me of the auto industry insisting everyone wants an SUV or monster truck.
We don’t? Xd
In the US many people do. Not so much outside of it. Personally I’ve wanted a truck ever since I was a kid and saw one plowing snow from our parking lot. Now I have one and I LOVE it.
I have big hands and I still can’t stand these 6"+ phones. They don’t fit in a pocket worth a shit and they’re fragile as hell.
I had a Samsung S4 Mini, it was my favorite phone. Fit in a shirt pocket, I kicked that thing down ladders and on gravel, never broke the screen. Everything else bigger has had a broken screen within a year.
Kicking a phone down a ladder isn’t exactly the intended use case though, so maybe it’s just your fault that your phone screen keeps getting broken. I’ve had large phones for years, and haven’t broken a single screen.
I have a V30 which has a fine size but I wish I didn’t have to go bigger
My hands aren’t particularly small either and I hate big phones. I like to use my phone with one hand most of the time so I need a small phone to hold it comfortably and to reach around the touch screen.
I’ve noticed even few millimeters of difference in width has great impact on how comfortable the phone is to use. Gesture navigation also helps and I think it was created out of necessity for bigger phones.
I 100% agree with you. I bought a folding phone just so that I could have a modern phone that fits in my damn pants. Comparing the size of any modern phone to the size of smartphone I had 10ish years ago (Xperia U…with a whopping 3.5 inch display) is absolutely wild. Being able to text with one hand again would be amazing.
I’m sad that phones don’t fit my hands anymore, but I know it’s my own fault for not growing my hands at the expected rate.
Yeah, grow some hands already! Xd
I agree. That’s one of the reasons I have a Sony Xperia 10. It’s has a 6" screen and is narrower than other phones making it very easy to hold and pocket.
Sadly the OEM’s will tell you that when given the choice, customers always go for the bigger screen because they think they are getting more. Which is why we have this situation.
Asus have the ZenFone which is smaller but even they are making a bigger 6.7" version next.
I hope at least they will release 2 phones
I hope so but I suspect it will only be the bigger one. I think they took a chance on the 6" but it didn’t sell as well as hoped so I think they are changing strategy.
My reasoning is that the ZenFone 10 did not upgrade much compared to ZenFone 9 which means they didn’t sell enough to justify spending a lot on the 10. If it sold well they would have added more features.
Maybe it didn’t sell well because they only give 2 years of upgrades. It’s way too few for a phone that expensive
I was considering an ASUS when I was looking for a new phone, but it quickly fell off my list due to just that, can’t justify buying a phone that gets less than 4 years of updates when OEMs are slowly rolling out 7 year support window. Ended up getting OnePlus12, and I am very happy with it.
I was cleaning out awhile ago and found my first ever smartphone, a Galaxy s3. Boy, the memories… that phone sure wasn’t perfect, but I think it’s still my favorite phone, and it was literally the perfect size for my tiny ass hands. I hate hauling a small tablet around.
I hate hauling a small tablet around.
Don’t you mean a “phablet”? 😜 If that awful name had stuck, I wonder if it might have dissuaded the device enlargement.
I like bigger phones, but I hate camera bumps.
Just make the damn thing thicker and flat on the back.
I miss my note 9, the last flat backed flagship phone.
maybe just get a case?
I consider cases an unfortunately necessary evil.
I prefer to go raw most of the time.
But wouldn’t a case do exactly what you want? It would make the damn thing thicker and flat on the back.
I’d prefer an easily removable battery, headphone jack, upgradable storage, etc etc. not just a thin phone with a thick case on it.
Look! The strawman stopped arguing their point, did not concede their point, and instead started making up all new arguments about things completely unrelated to the original complaint.
Next they’ll start trying to argue that it’s actually totally relevant to the original point. Lol
It would, but why not make the phone larger and add more battery?
I’ve never heard someone say “my phone has too much battery”
You don’t. But, people do complain about the weight and thickness. Personally, larger batteries(above 5000mah) which also charge super fast(120w) is the way to go.
No one complaint about the thickness and if you were to put a ratio on it, I’d say for every twenty people who I hear complain about battery life, one complains about weight.
That’s being generous. I’ve never (unless you count this one) had a conversation with anyone who has complained about a phone weighing too much.
Batteries lose a minute amount of capacity each charge cycle, and a bit just from “time”. If they put a battery in your phone that could start off lasting two days of pretty heavy use, then the charge cycles would reduce (less battery wear) and the usable life (even at half capacity it would still last an entire day) would significantly grow. So the real reason Apple or Samsung doesn’t give you a big battery is because the planned obsolescence would go from a few years to like five years, and they want to sell you more phones than that.
I like my big phone and most people seem to like them as well. Manufacturers want to sell more phones and the intersection of people who care about things you mention (what the heck is even uwb) and really want a small phone is very small.
It’s not just android devices, Apple discontinued the mini (5.4”) after the 13 series and they are on 15 series now. If you want a small iPhone now you have to get the SE which is an 8 with a chip from the 13 inside.
6.1 is still slightly smaller than the S24 OP is talking about.
Although Apple also remove features from the Plus phones when it comes to the camera.
I know this is an android /c, but I have the iPhone 15 Pro, so miss out on the upgraded camera.
I agree with OP. The big phones are just too big. I like the size of the standard size phones.
I’m hoping the Mini isn’t discontinued, just that they are skipping a few gens. I have a 13 Mini. Given my normal pace of buying, I’ll be in the market for a 20 Mini.
Yeah the mini is a great phone just didn’t sell well. I thought maybe they would roll the X back out as a mini or a SE since it’s screen size was about halfway between the mini and regular 12&13. I never thought phones would just keep getting bigger. I remember switching from a HTC One to an LG G3 with its massive 5.5” screen and it was just perfect lol.
The thing is that even if there is not an actually small phone, iphone 15 (pro) has an okay size. Think about pro max or plus. These guys are big
Try the CAT S22 for a compact and mediocre experience. I love it.
“and mediocre experience” hahaha
Have my up vote.
How bad is it? Seems that branded stuff like this would likely be mediocre.
Well for one thing, it costs more to make a smaller phone than a larger phone. There are other engineering concerns as well such as heat dissipation. But mostly, any company makes things for profit reasons, not what would work best for you:-(. Hence, if they can extort a higher amount of money out of you, then that is what they will aim to do.
They shouldn’t cost that much then. That’s what I’m saying. If they can’t put everything the bigger model has, at least make it cheaper
While I don’t disagree with most of what you mention, I do have to ask on a couple points…Isn’t it probably significantly more expensive for them to make foldable screens than to make a smaller phone? Also wouldn’t a larger device mean more materials involved which may mean similar or just as high costs as to engineer something more compact?
Also these are open questions, I’m not expecting you personally to know one way or another, your comment simply inspired them. If someone else has some insight on them, would be interested to read it!
One of the questions asked (“Why do I have to give 200€ more to get the s24+ just to get these simple features?”) was comparing S24 to S24+. While I have not looked it up, traditionally those versions range from SXY (small) to SXY+ (medium) and SXY Ultra (large), but are otherwise the same phone, so I would be surprised to hear if e.g. the S24 was foldable but the S24+ was not?
As for whether it gets more expensive to make something foldable vs. to make something more compact, I suspect the devil is in the details, so ymmv and you just kinda take each option as it comes. Other factors may help mitigate those costs e.g. a younger company trying to break into the big leagues might try to give phones away for virtually no profits in exchange for their increased market penetration (e.g. OnePlus used to be somewhat this way, now they are in the big leagues, more or less).
But your other point, about more materials: no, I believe that it’s more complex than that b/c it’s the effort of fitting things into tighter spaces that is more constraining. Imagine packing for a long vacation and/or a job interview at a far-away place and you get the idea - if you can fit everything into one suitcase that’s good, but a tiny backpack is much harder to accomplish, and to take nothing and just live with what you can carry on your body alone is REALLY tough! (especially if you want all the normal features like not smelling bad) i.e. the materials costs, while not negligible, have not been the driving/limiting force for many years. At least according to everything that I have read, but I am no phone manufacturer!:-)
As Openstars mentions, fitting stuff into a smaller space is much more work and expense than extra material for the body. I’ve watched engineers layout circuit boards for much, much, much less complex stuff and it’s quite a challenge.
Then there’s heat dissipation. Having owned numerous phones, including things like the S4 and S4 Mini, the mini would get hot doing certain tasks. Far less surface area means it will heat up and reduce performance. (Granted this was years ago, that hardware and Android version weren’t exactly efficient).
I’m sure there’s other issues like component selection (and sourcing), how many they expect to sell, etc, etc.
In the end, my money is on projections by marketing/sales/whoever.
Xperia Z compacts were awesome because of this.
Yeah they were probably the last great small Android phones. The “small” phones of today like the Zenfone and base Galaxy S series are noticeably larger.
That’s a hill I will die on. Bring back rugged android phones under 6".
Small phones are great but unfortunately we have become a niche. For companies to make products for a niche, they will have to charge them a high price or push them to different products.
The only small android phone I would consider is the Asus zen phone. And even that is +£700.
The problem is not that they are expensive. The problem is that even though they are expensive, they are still lacking basic features! Why can’t the s24 have 45w or the pixel 8 have thermometer sensor or the video boost thing? Like, no reason at all
Exactly, artificially limit the phone touch you to bigger phones.
Mind you, once you have many phones sharing the same hardware(for example the same 6.7inch screen), it becomes a question of adding or removing features (fast charging, AI, etc).
It makes commercial for companies to standardise on as many parts as possible.
On a nice technical level, heat and space. On a sales level, upselling. Larger phones dissipate more heat. Heat is bad for computers/phones. A 45w quick charge (which is dumb to use, fyi. Fast charging degrades batteries faster) has a larger amount of circuitry in the phone that takes up space to regulate and monitor the charge.
Beyond that, there’s a nice little formula used for how fast you can safely charge a lithium battery, and that formula directly ties into battery size. Essentially, for every 1000 mah worth of battery, the battery pack can handle about a 1 amp per hour charge (roughly). So the bigger the battery, the higher the wattage and amperage you can somewhat safely go. This is the main reason the s24 won’t have 45w fast charging. It has a 4,000mah battery. It’s too small a battery to even use the 45w fast charge without degrading the battery too fast. The s24plus has a 4,900 mah battery. That’s big enough to handle a 45w charge (though again, if you want your battery to last as long as possible, you want to disable it in settings.).
Now aside from just up selling, smaller phone= smaller parts needed. Your thermometer needs the hardware inside to support it and that has to go on the main board. Your smaller phone has less open space to fit it on there.
Then things like video boost while may be just an upsell, could also be because recording very high quality video is an intensive task on your phone so it causes more heat and drains your already smaller battery faster, which generates heat as well, and your smaller phones can’t get rid of that heat as quickly.
Next, I had seen you mention 1440 screens. That means across the whole screen there would be something like 2,960 pixels/dots of light in one direction and 1440 in the other. The more dots, the more resources (processor use etc) you need to power them, so your battery drains faster and phone heats up more. But the smaller the entire screen is, the less dots you need to make it look the same to you from the one or two feet away from your face you hold your phone. Smaller screens don’t really need a 2960 x 1440 screen. You can’t tell much of a difference on a screen that size and it would just make the batt drain faster for almost no reason. I have a large screened Note 20 Ultra that has a 1440 screen and I don’t even use it. I turned it down to 1080 because even on my larger phone the viewing quality wasn’t enough of an improvement to trade off from how long my battery would last on a charge.
Ram is mostly a money grab, but each ram chip does also use more battery as well.
In summary, for some things it’s a money grab, for others, there’s good reason it’s that way. But it’s also become a niche market for people who want the high end stuff in a smaller phone. You’re a minority. Cramming all the things in a smaller space is harder and therefor more expensive. There just aren’t enough people who are willing to pay a premium price to get the highest end phones that want a small phone, so no one makes them. There isn’t enough money in it. I believe you said in here you wanted to buy a phone for around $750, while top end phones are double that price, so not even you are willing to pay $1500 to get a 6" phone with all the best stuff packed inside.
Hope this helps. Cheers
I can accept the faster charging thing, that makes sense. They could have a bit bigger charging though, like 30w. Anyway. I suppose you don’t know about pixel 8 pros video boost. It’s really annoying cause it actually happens on the cloud. It’s not on device processing. Plus what about uwb? Or bigger storage? Anyway, they should at least be cheaper
Just read up on video boost. So a 1080p video gets upscaled and tweaked cloud side. What a gimmick. Looks like the exchange of paying more or an 8 pro is what gets you the server compute time for your video editing.
As I said, there aren’t enough people interested in paying more for a small phone to warrant a manufacturing run for bigger storage. They don’t think the amount they sell would be worth the fab costs or logistics.
Your best bets would probably be a zenfone or a 7a right now, but I agree as a small-handed person there is a serious lack of full-feature experiences in a small form factor.
It can’t have faster charging because it lacks the space to dissipate the thermal energy to stop it from catching on fire. If it did support 45W on paper, it would still charge slower to prevent thermal runaway. The “Ultra” models have thermal cooling systems that rival laptop computers just short of active cooling fans.
It can’t have UWB because it’s too small for the 30,000 antennae they have to jam in the phone. 4x+ for cellular, then GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Wireless charging, NFC, and on and on.
These phones, especially Samsung, jam so much technology in such a small package. We’re brushing up against the laws of physics.
And lets not even talk about then also expecting good cellular reception when on your lower cellular bands. Take 700MHz for example, an ideal 1/2 wavelength antenna would have to be 21cm/8.2in tall, so they have to use fractional wavelengths that further degrade performance potential, again, due to physics. (While still also supporting the fractional wavelengths of 30 other bands.) The plus and ultra models at least have space to approach more usable antennae for better reception. The tiny phones (and watches) don’t really have a chance.
Now, Google’s software feature nonsense, and the way handset manufacturers manipulate price for a few cents worth of storage increase are both downright criminal. However, the telephoto lens thing again goes back to space and reality. Telephoto cameras take up a ton of space. Look at a teardown of the S22 Ultra to see how big the camera modules are.
That’s actually an annoying point I recently observed though. The S24 ultra has a lower zoom telephoto camera than either the S22 Ultra or S23 Ultra. I think they’re trying to make up the difference with “AI” instead of real sensor/glass. Maybe it’ll get rid of the camera rattle though.
Firstly, iphone 15 has uwb. I think even the iphone 13 mini had. Secondly I think what Samsung did with the telephoto lens is that it went from a 10Mp 10x to a 50mp 5x. It wasn’t about ai, it was about megapixels. The end result I think is the same
Apple has different design tradeoffs, they use smaller camera modules than Samsung, at least compared to the last few Samsung models, for example. They also tend to use smaller batteries, and charge them slower, requiring less cooling components. They also design more of their components in-house than other manufacturers, allowing them more efficient use of space. Their RF also tends to be inferior to Samsung, trading antenna design for space. Apple also uses inferior cooling solutions, relying on software thermal throttling to cut down on the physical size of the device. The whole trade-off of what can be fit in that smaller space is something each manufacturer has to make per model.
Optical zoom will always be superior to digital from the perspective of getting focused light onto a sensor, it’s just science. Digital methods will indeed continue to improve, I’ll leave most of that philosophical debate to those more passionate about camera tech, however. They’re definitely leveraging the new coprocessor to enable better image processing, in the same way Google leveraged their ML coprocessor to improve pictures out of Pixels a few generations back. Companies think software processing of images can “work around” image quality that requires physical hardware. (Look at Samsung Moongate.) It results in images that may end up being visually pleasing, but as for image quality, that’s debatable. (Zoom in on a Samsung zoomed picture of a pine tree for example, the way it tries to contrast/filter/process the branches makes them look like some 1990s Photoshop unsharp mask filter job meant for newsprint.)
Good conversation.
