I know I have small hands but c’mon. Flagship phones these days are strait up small tablets, not even what we’d have called on phablets 15 years ago.
I know it’s what people buy, but I’m still sad that if I want a phone that small then I have to deal with camera and display a couple gens old
My hands are big and i want bigger phones
I think that you have plenty of top-of-the-line phablets to choose from
I wish I could get a flagship phone with a swappable battery, headphone jack, SD slot and allow my apps to interface with each other’s files when I want without having to fuck around with permission bullshit… I don’t care if it’s the size of a dinner plate
Fairphone might be somewhat closer for what you want
FP5 doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack 😔
An external DAC is better anyway, just put that on your headphones.
Having to use a USB hub to use my earphones while i’m charging my phone is not my idea of a pleasant user experience.
Yeah that is fair, but I preferred that a lot more than just using the 3mm jack on my Redmi Note 13 Pro. Man the DAC in that thing sucks.
Fairphone is also gigantic.
Yeah, that’s the problem. Why only 1 phone has the options most of us want?
I hate this billionaire-controlled timeline we’re on.
Most people don’t care and if there’s no microSD slot, you can sell more expensive phones via overpriced internal storage. No 3.5mm jack, but we’ve got these wireless buds you could try. Would be stupid for companies to put these things back unfortunately.
Because most people don’t need a 3mm jack anymore, I prefer to use a USB-c dac anyway the sound is better.
And I offload the data to a NAS anyway so the storage is irrelevant anyway.
HMD Skyline and Fusion also
Edit: Skyline doesn’t have headphone jack
No headphone jack on those unless I missed something.
Looks like Skyline doesn’t have one but Fusion does
Also make it durable. Thicker. Heavier. I’m going to slap a case on it otherwise
App restrictions can be disabled in developer options.
I would categorize that as having to fuck around with permission bullshit but thank you for the suggestion.
Just get a USB-c dongle and let that sit on your headphones. These days nearly everything has USB-c anyway and the sound is way better. The last phones I had with the USB-c jack (RedMi Note 13 Pro and iPhone 4 before that) all sounded worse than me using a cheap DAC. Getting an expensive DAC will improve the sound even more.
Personally I say that most would need to get a NAS before they need a SD card or you need to get a dedicated Camera or MP4 player if your pictures or music exceed the 500GB max and streaming isn;t an option using a NAS.
The rest of your points are valid.
Personally I say that most would need to get a NAS before they need a SD card or you need to get a dedicated Camera or MP4 player if your pictures or music exceed the 500GB max and streaming isn;t an option using a NAS.
Yeah spending 100s of dollars on whole other devices you have to carry around instead of like 10 for an SD card makes a ton of sense.
Yeah man cause a SD card that sits in your phone also works as a backup solution.
It’s not a backup. Neither is a camera or MP4 player (which also can’t play games or display books/comics, so I’d be up to 4 devices to have all my media covered). It’s a way of keeping my media available while I am on the go with or without a internet connection. It’s by far the simplest solution and allows me to do everything on my phone.
A MP4 player can play games or display books/comics. The once from FiO basically are Android devices from which you cannot call (or maybe with an internet connection you can).
Being on the go without an internet connection is getting rarer and rarer anyway so that is less of an issue for most.
Truth of it all is that most people want tinner phones and/or wireless earbuds/headsets and the people who do not are for a big part audiophiles who want better audio quality than a phone is going to offer. So there is only a relatively small section of users who prefer the audio jack.
I used to want one and a SD card and a good 3mm jack as well, but it just doesn’t exist. So I switched to using a NAS (a raspberry Pi can get your pretty far), plus an iPod or Spotify with dongles or just wireless.
Truth of it all is that most people want tinner phones and/or wireless earbuds/headsets and the people who do not are for a big part audiophiles who want better audio quality than a phone is going to offer. So there is only a relatively small section of users who prefer the audio jack.
I think the real truth is most people just take whatever the phone corporations shovel down their throats without thinking too much about it as long as they have the newest model. Phones have been thin enough for years now. They’ve hit the point where they can’t make the camera as thin as the rest of the phone so it sticks out and won’t sit flat. It’s ridiculous. It’s not like they’ve replaced the features we lost with new better technology anyway. There’s no reason customer focused reason to remove those features. They did it to sell more shit and make their devices less repairable. Expecting people to carry two or more devices when one could do everything is asinine. Also my phone has a Hi-fi DAC and gives fantastic audio quality through the headphone jack.
What phone do you have then?
Apparently the market is not big enough for phone’s to really exist with all the features everybody want for an acceptable price. Otherwise more options with good sound quality and SD card slots exist. But the nature of how DAC’s works is that it is hard to fit that in a slim phone and especially if you want long battery life etc.
Maybe taking two devices is a bit stupid, but on the other hand you can also ask yourself how often you can leave your phone at home or wherever when you want to listen to music.
I would also prefer a phone that has a good DAC, has a SD card and has good working apps. So unless Apple is going to start making that again (they never will), I’ll probably stick with an iPhone and a separate audio device or wireless buds/headphone. Android is not for me and finding the correct Android is a bullshit mess. But I know of others who are interested in an Android device with a good DAC.
I don’t know of any with swappable batteries anymore. The HTC U24 and U23 series both have headphone jack and MicroSD slot. There are a few others.
every time i “upgrade” my phone it gets bigger, i hate it. the perfect size was what whatever iPhone 5 was doing, i want to go back to that
Wider, longer, flatter, thinner, and harder to hold without touching shit at the edge of the screen. I miss being able to grip a phone by its buttons.
iPhone 12 or 13 mini is similar to that size
i don’t use iPhones anymore, that was the one time i tried them and aside from the size and some features i much prefer the openess of android
I’ve never owned an iPhone, and wouldn’t normally recommend them at all, but looks to me like its one of the only recent smartphones that is small 😞
Actually looking into it a bit more: there’s some smallish ones such as the Asus Zenphone 10 and foldables such as the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra.
https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-small-phones
https://m.gsmarena.com/best_compact_phones_buyers_guide-review-2029.php
But yeah they’re still not as small as the iPhone 5
I loved my iPhone 5 more than any other device I’ve owned. Perfect size.
iPhone 5 / original SE was a good design, and a good size, but it was also the first iPhone I had to buy a case for because it was so damn light and thin it was hard to handle compared to the thicker, glass-plated 4.
iPhone 4S is still the most perfect form for a smartphone I’ve ever owned
13 mini is pretty comparable
It’s one of the best ones to come out recently, but it’s still significantly taller than the pre-iPhone 6 models
Oof this is the reason why I went with Fold. Basically when folded it takes almost the same area as an iPhone 5 albeit quite thicker. But my hand adjusted to the thickness quite nicely.
Having basically a small tablet when you unfold the phone for actual two handed use is good too.
Skill issue
How did you get a picture of me?
I miss phones that experimented.
I had the Motorola backflip (that was a fun one) and had one of the first phones with a fingerprint sensor that everyone said was a gimmick, had the one with the “indestructible screen” (Motorola Z2 force iirc) that I had a lot of fun throwing around till I broke it (But not the screen! I’ll give them that lmao), had every Nexus device until the bitter end (I cursed Google for a long time when they decided Pixels was the way forward, I didn’t pick up a pixel again until the Pixel Fold 0G) and so so many others over the years.
Until one day they just stopped being cool for years, hell the Foldy phone has been the coolest innovation they’ve put out in years and we’re already back to nothing but iterations again
You would really enjoy the When Phones Were Fun series on YouTube if you haven’t seen them
The box for HTC HD2 had
<---- BIG ---->as dimensions of the phone. It had a 4.3" screen that actually was huge at the time (2009), but it’s hilarious from today’s perspective.
16:9 + huge bezels. A Huawei Mate 8 (6.0") which would be tiny today is still more of a brick than a S25 Ultra with 6.8".
Notice that the dimensions in the picture are marked only for the screen proper, not including bezels.
Well, it may only have had a 4 inch screen, but it also had huge bezels. It’s less tall than modern flagships, but almost the same width, making it similar for one handed use.
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/HTC-HD2,Google-Pixel-9-Pro/phones/3887,12285
Notice that the dimensions in the picture are marked only for the screen proper, not including bezels.
When phones were still fun
…its 2035 and the ending of jeans as we know them. Today the birth of the unipocket marks the start of another page in crotch covering technology. We’ll no longer be bound by the primitive tubular jeans of old. Jeans with two small front pockets that wouldn’t cover anyone’s privates in the case, the oh so common zipper failure. No, no ziper, no flimsy buttons either. Those have always been weakness. The future is brighter than we could have ever imagined. That’s right! Front and rear screens covering every crotch on the planets. And a screen belt to hold it all together. And for the perpetualization of Victoria’s Secret, the new double circular scraw… A scraw covering every pair of tits on the planet! Imagine full crotch ads! Imagine all the profit!
We’ll all start wearing kilts with enormous sporrans
Sir! Please calm your sporrans! Or are you happy to see me? Wait hold on, we have a family guy short, it’s the classic chicken fight scene.
It was already difficult enough to undo bra hooks, but now you can watch 6 unskipable ads instead and it’ll release itself automatically. Much profit indeed.
and your pockets! in both the literal and figurative sense.
It’s not even flagship phones. Even the cheaper ones are huge. When I had to replace my LG phone (6") I went to an electronics store to see what’s on the market right now. Of all phones availiable there only were two android phones (I don’t know which brand) that were sized similarly to my LG phone. Both of them were in the 800-€-price-range.
Similar with iPhones. Almost all models exceeded the 6" screen size, except for one or two models which were in the 1000-€-price-range. They also had an iPhone SE there, that had the desired size. I bought this as a refurbished one online for a fraction of the original price.
It’s harder and harder to find a phone that has a size that either fits in your hand or that can be carried inside your pants without restricting your ability to sit down while the phone is inside the pocket.
That’s not an “even”. Cheaper phones have been larger as the default for a while now, because they’re often the primary, if not the only device their owners have.
I miss when flagship phone were affordable and worth the cost
You no longer need to have flagship phone, to have good experience though. I am rocking my Samsung Galaxy A52 and it does everything I want it to. Only current localization and direction seem to behave weirdly and not accurate when navigating using Google Maps (especially when walking) but on other apps it’s perfectly fine, so go figure, lol.
This is the real problem.
They do NOTHING to improve or innovate. In fact, we’ve lost most great features over the years. The headphone jack for high quality audio, the micro SD card slot for easy upgrades and migrations, the IR blasters, the replaceable batteries…
It’s a fucking joke. Peak phone tech was the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Sorry, you gotta upgrade everything every 5 years, because otherwise there’s a security vulnerability! Sorry, looks like there will be no new updates on your software, no compatibility! Surely, things have become so much more efficient in the last 5 years as a result of processing gains, and surely that will be passed onto the consumer rather than eaten up in the middle, and surely we need that increased processing power so you can run the increasingly dwindling number of social media sites that are actually relevant!
Sorry, looks like we got rid of the headphone jack because it takes up too much space and it’s too hard to make the phone water resistant! The IR blaster isn’t relevant anymore because everyone has unilaterally switched to wifi operated smart TVs! Surely! Sorry, the micro SD card slot took up too much space, we need to use that space for processing power! Same with irreplaceable batteries! Sorry, the 16:9 aspect ratio we used to have for phones isn’t available in any phone anymore, because we decided to replace the physical buttons and ugly bezels with basically unusable screen space! But we’re still gonna have a hole punched in the screen for the camera!
I dunno. Modern phones are fucking dogshit now, I hate them so much it’s unreal. Even the software is progressively getting worse year over year. Shit used to be so basically functional and it’s become so horrible.
I have the same problem and my latest was an asus zenfone after a ton of research. Its been pretty solid actually.
Zenfone was heavily promoted as a “small” phone but its larger than the base galaxy, despite having a smaller display
I do wish it was slightly shorter. They just don’t make small enough phones anymore for my taste.
I went from a Pixel 6 Pro (I believe the one on the left might be a Pixel 6 Pro as well) to a Pixel 9 Pro recently and it’s just about the perfect size for a phone IMO (6.3").
Close, it’s a pixel 7 pro. Practical identical from appearance.
The 9 pro looks to be the same size as the 7a, which is still a bit bigger than I want but way more reasonable than I was expecting
With a Spigen Tough Armor case, right? Had one on my 6 Pro, too, saved it from quite a few nasty drops.
When you consider the 9 Pro’s screen to body ratio it’s pretty compact, especially for a flagship. Ten years ago a phone of its size would have maybe had a 5" screen.
I’m still on my 2016 iPhone SE. It’s slow and buggy but for my purposes it’s great and the screen is only 10cm (4in).
I still have mine as a secondary work phone. Love the size and format of it in general, although I think I’d still prefer a phone slightly bigger (~10%) and with a higher resolution (1080p?) display, mainly for media consumption.
Outside of that, I second the slow and buggy comment (although in my experience this has been mostly with Microsoft Teams, which is a buggy mess regardless)
The Pixel 9 Pro is a flagship phone, the only difference to the Pixel 9 Pro XL is the size, charging speed and battery capacity
The phone you see on that left is a pixel 7 pro.
Is the pixel 9 pro much smaller than that? Because I wouldn’t call the pixel 7 pro “small”I actually went from a 7 pro to a 9 pro, and while Idk if its small enough for you it is a massive change in usability for me. I disliked the 7 it was usable but annoying at times to reach stuff I almost never have that issue with the 9 pro.
Yes, the Pixel 7 Pro was when Google still only had 2 models, the big pro model and the small non-pro model.
With the Pixel 9 series there are 3 options, the budget pixel 9, which is a small phone, the Pixel 9 Pro, which is a flagship but the same size as the small Pixel 9,or the Pixel 9 Pro XL, which is the big version of the flagship Pixel 9 Pro. So you no longer need to compromise if you want a small Pixel phone
isnt the pixel 7a the budget pixel 7?
Oh the p9, p9p, and p9a is the same size as the p7a. Nice! Still a bit large but still a great improvement on the p7p
Why would you buy a flagship phone? It sounds like you want not that. And not that exists.
Because, like I said in the post, flagship phones have the best cameras, and I take a lot of pictures
Image sensor and optics quality drop off pretty quickly once you leave flagship territory.
