I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone • Hacker News Board

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#541

Post by scarface74 » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #120

izacus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "slow iPhone 13 mini" sales are more than all Google Pixel phones sold in a year. Think about that. I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews and modern American perception. Why is being able to buy niche products somehow not a worthy thing to be desired?

I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews Because so many on HN have been indoctrinated into the "scale at all costs" mentality. It demonstrates the difference between HN and the real world. On HN, if you can't serve a billion people, your product is niche. In the real world, billions of people earn a very nice living making niche products. I…

And it took Panic a decade to release the Playdate and it is still back ordered for over a year. Hardware has to “scale” to get manufacturing capacity and scale economies.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#542

Post by awalGarg » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

hammock wrote: 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).

Can you release the kernel sources? Thanks.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#543

Post by scarface74 » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #448

cortesoft wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the real world, billions of people earn a very nice living making niche products. But rarely something as expensive to create as a smart phone.

The limitation to making niche phones are the stupid, sclerotic, CARRIERS --not the manufacturers. It's the carrier gatekeeping that prevents niche phones from forming. We need a ruling like from back in the Bell System era where you are allowed to bring customer equipment to the network without the network owner permission.

You don’t need a network owners permission for GSM/LTE. The only time you needed that was for CDMA.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#544

Post by hedgehog » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #523

toqy wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller screened smartphones aren't a new market that needs to be defined though. Most people know what they are by virtue of having lived through the era that they were the only choice. And as OP pointed out, Apple makes a smaller screened smartphone, so they exist. In some comment on this post someone said that it accounts for 3% of Apple's phone sales. How big is the group of people that want a smaller smart phone…

Apple's limited success is not only a factor of the screen size but also market positioning. The mini is inferior in some specs to other iPhones but at the same time really high end as far as mobiles in general go. That makes it a niche product even if screen size was not a factor at all. It targets people that have plenty of cash for a flagship but are willing to forego the top tier specs for a smaller size. Apple p…

Even the small phone user base is probably fragmented between people who want a lower cost phone and people like me that want the Pro or better, just smaller.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#545

Post by bedast » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

NearAP wrote: post #260

bedast wrote: post #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…

>> 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. I'm not sure about that. This could be due to the marketing/positioning i.e. Apple first switched to producing bigger phones (with more features/power) which caused people to buy t…

> After some complaints, Apple produced a smaller version of their phone but they market it as one with less features (smaller battery, smaller processor, etc).

iPhone 12 and 13 minis are the same hardware with smaller screen and battery than their iPhone 12 and 13 (non-pro) counterparts. Are you referring to the SE or something? Even the SE has been getting upgraded processors with previous generation screens, cameras, etc.

The minis have been flagship specs in smaller packages. If the smaller battery thing was to be a knock on Apple for making it inferior, how do you suppose you fit a full size iPhone 13 battery into that mini frame with all the other internal hardware the same?

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#546

Post by quartus » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

I'm still using the Pixel 4, I'm happy with it. I tried the Pixel 6 but it's just too gigantic, and the camera strip sticks out too much, so I went back to the 4

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#547

Post by stratosmacker » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

erohead wrote: 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…

I have an iphone SE 2016 because I too felt that new Androids were too big, switched in 2019. If too many people are upset at the price maybe you could have an Android Mini-a like the Pixel line.

I had the first Pebble and have fond memories. I have high hopes for this!!!! I also love hardware but I never made it stick for work. I was one of the first engineers at Mesur.io, but things didn't work out.

My other thought would be to make this highly configurable; there is a large cohort of HN crowd who also want an un-Googled Android phone, myself included. There are no un-Googled small android phones, however with Project Treble many of them can run GSIs such as this most popular one https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/releases . Of course Lineage OS deserves a mention, maybe you could ship with that, build on what the community already offers.

The Unihertz line of phones deserves mention, but also scorn; they do NOT support their old hardware at all. The Jelly had 1 update to Android 8.1 and was left for dead. Additionally the system updater software included in the stock ROM was spyware. So unfortunately they were written off in my book.

Finally, I would like to see band 71 LTE availability for T-Mobile in the US. It really makes a big difference in the sticks. Unihertz does not support that, and for that reason I am sticking with my iPhone SE 2016 for the moment (until I find a small Android phone....)

Can't wait to hear more!

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#548

Post by boznz » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

cehrlich wrote: post #290

davee5 wrote: post #270

Hi Eric, I'm a hardware startup guy myself (our paths have crossed) with the distinction that my own "very specific set of skills" has been honed at smartphone megacompanies and smartphone startups. OSOM, Essential, HTC, Samsung, Apple. I've designed and built a lot of phones. I'm building one now. I think this is a noble effort, I personally prefer pocketable phones too, but I think there are nigh-insurmountable hur…

I wonder if there isn't a third factor: 3. Android OEMs can't make a good small phone, even if there was the demand to produce it at scale Because of how efficient Apple's SoCs are compared to Snapdragons, Android phones typically have much larger batteries than iPhones while getting about the same battery life. Big battery requires a big phone. The occasional somewhat small Android phone (for example Galaxy S10e) te…

Remove all the crapware and you are generally back to a good battery life

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#549

Post by bedast » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

sircastor wrote: post #351

bedast wrote: post #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…

I love my iPhone 12 Mini, and I was really disappointed when I found out the mini line is likely being dropped with the next generation (It's almost certain) Being very honest, I think the original iPhone was the right size - through the iPhone 4. I appreciate that people wanted larger screens, and larger screens accommodate larger batteries, but I think the 3.5" screen of the early iPhones made for a great size. Oh…

Interestingly, the iPhone 4 is physically not much smaller than the iPhone 12 mini, but has a significant screen size bump. I was curious about this because my old Droid Eris had a 3.2" screen and I was curious how it physically measured up overall. It was slightly smaller than the iPhone 4. The idea that I have something, now, that is not that much bigger, but with so much more screen is super interesting because I had wanted to go back down to something small like that, and this is likely as close as I'll realistically get, and it's not that bad!

My suspicion is, based on various bits of info I've seen, iPhone 14 won't see a mini and the next SE will be based on the current mini. They have been upgrading the SoC in the SE but not the camera nor the screen, and I bet they want to get that bumped up to something more modern. So this form factor/size may not be all that lost. Here's hoping, anyway.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone

#550

Post by jan_g » Tue, May 17, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

brnaftr361 wrote: post #474

nfoz wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"selfie"? Video-calls are especially normalized now, since the pandemic. My family and friends use video-calls more often than voice-only calls now.

You do that on the phone? I'd never. And nobody I know has changed their communication. Discord, text, call. Everyone in my milieu is painfully average.

Nobody? I'm sort of in the same boat (I quite dislike video calls), but my extended family (from young to 60+) have started during pandemic and now continue to video call each other quite regularly - including group video calls.

As I said, not my preference and I rarely join, but for example my wife does video calls almost on a daily basis. So the "selfie" camera seems to be increasingly an important feature for the regular user.