I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#541

Post by randomcarbloke » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:36 PM UTC

easton wrote: post #406

randomcarbloke wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using a 13 mini, it's fractionally too large, I think the original SE is perfection. Regardless, battery life is horrendous now, and it's starting to lag and fail so when the new ultra watch is released I'm going to replace my phone with it.

Getting the battery replaced fixed mine (and seemed to mildly improve system performance, although maybe that’s placebo), might be worth a shot if you like the form factor.

it has a few dings on the frame and I'm not especially attached to the form factor more significantly I am addicted to it and need a viable alternative.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#542

Post by arccy » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:39 PM UTC

herpdyderp wrote: post #523

I was hoping that the foldable phone market would fix this, but instead of making normal sized (huge) phones that fold into half the size, they made tablets that fold into normal sized (huge) phones!

you can get a Samsung Galaxy Flip series phone

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#543

Post by fckgw » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #515

rickdeckard wrote: post #422

The hard reality is that there is no PAYING market for such a device, because when it comes to the point-of-sale, most people still choose the normal-size device with better screen/battery/camera. This is equivalent to something I called the "QWERTY paradox" more than a decade ago: Back when the Smartphone market exploded, people disliked typing on a touchscreen and repeatedly stated that they want a device with a ph…

The "mini" versions of phones (even the ones marketed as premium) always seem to be nerfed in other ways, like battery life, camera quality, or performance, which could explain why they inevitably don't sell. Nobody really offers a balls-out premium small form factor phone that is better than or equal to the flagship big-phone .

That was the iPhone Mini! Same internal specs as the regular iPhone, smaller package, roughly same battery life. And it's gone because no one wanted it.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#544

Post by bigstrat2003 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:47 PM UTC

knubie wrote: post #197

wyre wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general population wants larger phones because they are addicted to their screens.

The other problem is that more and more content now is designed for (or only tolerable on) larger phone screens. Go to any website these days on a smaller phone like an iPhone mini and more than 50% (being charitable here) of the screen will be taken up by garbage like ads, cookie banners, popups, etc. It's a vicious cycle. Phone manufactures make the screen bigger, app and website developers realize they can cram mo…

Ironically, I have the opposite problem with website design. So many sites are clearly designed for mobile screen sizes, with a teensy-tiny strip of text on my large monitor. It's very unpleasant to read lines of text that short, so on a lot of sites I have to go into dev tools and set the text width to 1200px to make it an actual comfortable reading experience. I should not have to mess with CSS to make websites readable, but here we are.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#545

Post by RussianCow » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

ikari_pl wrote: post #530

mtmail wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When asking people if they'd buy a yellow Sony Walkman people said yes. Shortly after given the choice to take one home the same people picked black. https://medium.com/@diogomarta/the-yellow-walkman-paradox-th...

Well, that's a lesson on asking the right question . You like the new yellow one, but you like the black one even more. Nobody asked about black.

It's simpler than that. People often don't know what they want until they're actually presented with the buying decision. Economists call this stated vs revealed preferences and it's a well documented and understood phenomena.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#546

Post by bigstrat2003 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:50 PM UTC

volemo wrote: post #319

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who ever brought a laptop to a friend group hangout? I never have seen that happen myself.

I’m not sure if your comment is sarcastic, but in case it isn’t: my friend group had a get-together two days ago, three out of six had a laptop with them, and it even came in handy when I started talking about the problem I’m working on, somebody got interested and I was able to show the plots and calculations. Also we have PowerPoint Parties somewhat regularly, where most of us bring their computers to make last min…

Not sarcastic at all. I have never seen people (not even my nerdy friends, least of all normies) bring laptops to a friend hangout. People might bring laptops if they were getting together to work on stuff, but then that isn't just hanging out any more, there's a purpose to the gathering. I would be astonished if someone could show that non-techy people ever brought laptops when they would hang out. Techy people (like your friend group), maybe. But not your average person.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#547

Post by nordsieck » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

Topfi wrote: post #507

amluto wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it comes to the point-of-sale, most people still choose the normal-size device with better screen/battery/camera. My theory is that much of this effect is an error, or at least a far-less-than-ideal effort, on the part of the designers. Of course it’s hard to sell a low-end “mini” device with a worse camera, worse battery life, etc. But that’s not actually what I, or many people I discuss this with, want. I wo…

> The iPhone 12 and 13 Mini were always marketed as the cheaper versions [...] No, they were not. They were literally a scaled down version of their respective regular sized counterparts, the 13 Mini had the same cameras, SOC, memory, screen quality and storage options as the regular 13 [0], yet its sales success (or lack thereof [1]) was enough to instantly cure me of any previously held notions that there is a suff…

For a while, I was optimistic that Apple would at least continue to release the SE every 3-ish years. I'm guessing they wanted to finally kill the fingerprint reader and other SE-specific features[1]. And maybe even the SE with its reduced price didn't sell that well.

---

1. Yes, I understand that these features were present in other phones, but the SE was the last phone actively sold by Apple that had them

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#548

Post by bigstrat2003 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

prmoustache wrote: post #331

FinnKuhn wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know it’s weird to those of us who like the opposite and funnily enough it’s often women who have gigantic phone, which they can’t put in their tiny jean pocket. Most women carry their phone in a hand bag anyway as the pockets on most pants for women are way to small either way [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/style/pockets-womens-clot...

Most women pants have no or fake pockets anyway, So the smartphone to pants pocket size relationship is usually only a parameter for men.

The pants thing is another baffling mystery. I know exactly zero women who want their pants to not have pockets. Yet manufacturers absolutely refuse to add pockets. It seems like a complete market failure.

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#549

Post by scarface_74 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #272

scarface_74 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Linux computer can you buy with the battery life, quietness, lack of heat and speed of a modern ARM based Mac? As far as phones - your alternative is to buy an Android phone with an operating system by an ad company that is also pushing AI just as hard. And you still end up getting most apps from the Google Play Store. By the way, iMessage supports SMS/MMS/RCS for interoperability. What else do you want?

What Linux computer can you buy with the battery life, quietness, lack of heat and speed of a modern ARM based Mac? Battery life, probably none. For the rest it's pretty ok now - I recently got a ThinkPad T14. Performance-wise it's in M1/M2 territory and yes the fans can spin up, but they are not very loud. I have used MacBooks since 2007, but I have started using the ThinkPad more and more. Why? I put in 64GiB RAM a…

And no mainstream apps…

Re: I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)

#550

Post by bigstrat2003 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #233

thaumasiotes wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have ignored the part of my comment pointing out that the dynamic you describe doesn't occur in any other market. Perhaps... just perhaps... the explanation lies elsewhere? I should have included some kind of question as to what it might be.

I don't think it's meaningful. There are not enough people who would buy such a device to make it profitable to design and manufacture. Your priors - "You have ... people who want them to fit in your hand" Are incorrect. The number of people who will actually buy small devices is ... small. The number of people who are so interested in small devices they'll overlook things like a lower battery life and whatever other…

Unless you're asserting the number of people who will actually buy small devices is zero (which I would hope you aren't given the evidence to the contrary in this thread), his priors are in fact correct. If there exists any number of people willing to buy small phones, then the statement "you have people who want them to fit in your hand" is true.