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I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

smallandroidphone.com

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Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#151

iPhone 12 mini user here: after almost 2 years I decided to not buy a new mini again. The battery life is the biggest factor on my decision. I want a phone that lasts one day at least on full use, the mini once you start doing GPS the battery dies almost in two hours. The screen is good for messagging, some Twitter browsing, etc. After that it becomes painful. I'm buying the next model on the standard size, no need t…

The iPhone 13 Mini has amazing battery life. It outlasts the standard size iPhone 12.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#152

I have given up: the iphone mini (which I own) is gargantuan. There are a few glimmers of hope around the edges. Palm was interesting but too small (the primary problem was the battery, not the screen size). Unihertz is doing some interesting stuff in the small phone arena, but their stuff is either too small and thick (the jelly) or too big (titan). Their styling is also a bit funky in a 90's tech vibe sort of way t…

I'm with you! The litephone 2 is the closest we've gotten but at our market-size the software stability will likely be lacking.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#153
post #32

Shameless plug for the Jelly 2. https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-2 It's not a "flagship" but it is fully featured - nothing spared - and half the size of my palm. The screen is just small enough to be too annoying to do anything really distracting on. I have gotten NOTHING but compliments on it since I started using it a month ago (on a reco I picked up here).

<3 this is awesome! It even has NFC! So you can use Google Pay with it? WiFi calling? Looks like the perfect Google Fi and international travel phone too with all the bands it supports.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But admittedly here in Germany SUVs are also on the rise, even though we have that "environmentally conscious" reputation.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk of Germans as environmentally conscious. Car culture is usually one of the first things that comes up when someone talks about Germany.

Sure car culture is big, but does that mean people like big cars?

Also curious where you're from that you never heard of this.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#156
post #15
post #6

“matching size and design of iPhone 13 Mini” So, by all accounts, the iPhone mini has been an extremely slow seller. https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula... Why would that form factor succeed in the Android space? --- I see these meme on tech sites all the time: “oh phones are too big I just want something simple”. That is a valid sentiment that I think is shared by basically no average consum…

I touch on this on the site. 5% of iPhones sold are minis. That's 10m sold per year! That is more than enough demand to cover the NREs and costs of making a phone. * https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/21/cirp-iphone-13-best-selling-l...

Hold on; the math is not that easy.

For one - most of the iPhone Mini sale is because of 'Halo effect', die hard fans who anyway would have bought an iPhone, bought the mini version. An Android phone maker will not have that brand pull or halo effect to establish a new category, so it would be no where near that 10M number.

Second, iPhone or Mac devices are known for hardware and software integration. That translates among other things to good battery life (similar to RAM. Apple never talks about RAM).

iPhone Mini has been weak in battery department [1], one of the factor in its low sale as compared to bigger device. A Mini Android device will have mini batteries, that means it will have no chance in h* to last through the day - the minimum requirement in this day and age.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/20/apple-iph....

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#157
The Nexus 5X was the perfect size phone in my opinion. I'm content with the Pixel 4a at the moment, but it is clearly too tall to use with one hand for me. I have to shimmy it up and down to reach the top and bottom. Which I suspect is the problem with almost every phone these days.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#158
I have an iPhone 12 mini. I switched to iPhone with the XR and felt it was too big. My old Pixel 2 feels larger than the 12 mini with it's 5" screen versus the 12 mini's 5.4", and that's because it physically is overall larger.

When the iPhone 12 lineup was announced, the main talking point about the mini among reviewers and whatnot was how poor battery life will be. To be honest, once I disabled the 5G (I'm not anti-5G, I just don't need it most of the time), battery life is fine. In fact, it's pretty phenomenal for the specs if you've had any lengthy history with smartphones (my first LTE phone either needed multiple charges per day, or I carried spare batteries).

It's pretty easy to build an echo chamber that agrees smaller phones are preferred and make it appear as though there's a decent amount of us, but the simple fact is, people like us are in the minority, and it shows in the iPhone sales. That's why there's not going to be an iPhone 14 mini, and why the mini design is probably going to be the next SE. And if you even look at the SE sales numbers, they're still not great against other iPhone models.

On top of that, this audience, specifically, are probably not going to be upgrading every generation, so there's going to be gaps where we don't feed the machine/sales numbers to make it look better. I will not buy an iPhone 13 mini. I will not buy an iPhone 14. I probably will not even buy the next SE even if it's an iPhone 13 mini with a newer SoC. So long as my 12 mini keeps going, it'll continue to serve me. So I fail to contribute to the sales numbers to make it look better.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#159
post #2

I’m a long-time small phone Android user. But after the Pixel 5, I have not been able to find a suitable small Android replacement. The Pixel 6 is gigantic, and the Pixel 7 looks like it is also destined to be huge. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve resorted to using an iPhone Mini, biding my time and hoping desperately that some Android OEM would step up. But it’s increasingly clear that a small premium phone is not on t…

It's pretty damning that when one searches for 'best small android phone' the pixel 5a (massive!) is at the top of most lists.

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Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5% seems quite small and not worth the trouble. It might be worth it if a small phone generated 5% in additional sales, but most people buying a small iPhone would likely buy a normal-sized iPhone if no small version was available rather than making the switch to Android.

5% of 100 phones is 5 phones. 5% of 200,000,000 is 10,000,000. 5% can be a huge number, or a tiny number, depending on what it's 5% of . I switched from Android to Apple specifically for the iPhone mini, and if they killed it, I would switch to the smallest phone on the market.

Is there a world where the iPhone mini is necessary or desirable when the iPhone SE also exists? I don't see a need for both, especially when they run the same processor under the hood.
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