Why can't we go back to small phones?

Based on https://postmarketos.org/install/ the Nokia N900 can run the latest stable release of PostmarketOS.

Nokia N900 was a proper Linux-powered phone released in November 2009.

So yeah, it's been getting over 15 years of community support so far.

Edit: Fixed typo

What's wrong with Fairphone then? Think I'm gonna buy FP 6 when it arrives

I really wanted to buy the Fairphone 5, but they don't ship replacement parts to where I live which makes the entire concept pointless.

Imo I don't think the goal is/should be "every part is repairable by any average person without tools" tbh. Like that would be awesome but it also isn't realistic, like you said phones are super complicated. But making simple repairs – stuff like swapping a battery – possible for anybody is realistic imo, and then the rest should be as easy to repair as possible for local shops or someone who does have the necessary skills and equipment. At least personally I feel like that's a good spot to aim for.

Replacing SMT components would fall outside of repairability for 99.99999% of people. More realistically things like ports, screens, and batteries should be replaceable since they're typically connected to the main board with cables. Furthermore ICs going back on a phone is probably extremely rare while the above mentioned items are very common failure points.

It's sad that people have gotten used to just throwing away stuff instead of repairing it. Sure, some repairs really aren't worth it - like the screen I'd gotten replaced of my LG G3 that was prone to have this defect with its screen regardless of screen swaps and whatnot - but most of the time, it's just minor things that can actually be fixed by non-tech savvy person.

I think it should be of paramount importance that more companies are held accountable as to the amount of waste they're producing and how much they're contributing to pollution and waste around the globe. Unfortunately, capitalism is a thing, so that's not gonna happen.

Having repairable options for those that do care is awesome, though. If I could afford, I'd gladly go for a Fairphone if I ever need to replace my current phone (still going strong after 5 years of use). Until their mass appeal, they'll likely remain out of my pockets.

Bga is more about skill than equipment. I’ve done it with a cheap hot air gun and a toaster oven. Though it took many failed attempts to get right

But this isn’t always about your phone being repairable by you. It’s about your phone being repairable at all. Apple, google, samsung, et al have made it clear that they have no interest in refurbishing and repairing phones. That’s fine, they have the right to do whatever I guess. And further, this creates a great opportunity for many people to create small businesses.

America has very few markets left wherein one can create a business that is not utterly dominated by some conglomerate that will eat your shit. This is one where you can do so, with honest work (eg not just buying shit from Chinese manufacturers and reselling it on amazon for a profit).

However, the tech industry is openly hostile to small business and its consumers, so every business that has worked in this sector has been either destroyed or hollowed out to barely anything by big techs greedy bullshit in the name of security.

This would enrich communities: you would have another possible route where someone local could open a business within the community, that would hire locally within the community. But apple, samsung, microsoft, etc lobby extremely hard to make sure that they never have to stop pairing parts, providing spare parts, providing schematics, etc. and of course they’re not being asked to do this for free. They’re being asked to do this for a fair and reasonable cost, but they still refuse.

Now designing phones with user replaceable wear items like batteries or even common failure points like screens is obviously a good idea as well in theory but comes with challenges. However the challenges are mixed. Batteries can be user replaceable in thin and waterproof phones. The galaxy s5 is almost as thin and almost as waterproof as the s23 and has a user replaceable battery. If more engineering effort was put forth I’m sure it could be greatly improved. The issue is design; they (especially apple) don’t want to disrupt their “beautiful”glass back phones that 99.9999% of people slap a case on. User replaceable screens are more challenging to make waterproof but I’m sure they could figure it out.

But if the above was addressed, they wouldn’t necessarily have to. We could go back to the days of going to a small store next to your grocery store and getting your phone screen changed out for $150 while you do your shopping. except much more money because an iphone 16 pro max oled is ~ $700 just for the screen, which brings up the other issue of people don’t want to repair stuff anymore because component cost is outrageous. The phone is $1200 for the base model so if the screen and labor is $800 a lot of people will (foolishly) go “well for $400 more I can just get a brand new one!” even though it’s the same damn phone. However, these screen prices fall dramatically when the phones get even a few gens older and a bunch get recycled

Unfortunately phone itself is not impressive especially from OS update standpoint

I swear to god manufacturers do this on purpose so that they can point to the low volume of sales and claim "See! People don't really want these features" when in reality they've just slapped a couple good features onto a completely dog shit device.

I picked the Pixel A because:

1. It runs GrapheneOS
2. It's slightly smaller and slightly cheaper than the normal version
3. The back is plastic and not glass

Glad I can use it and type on it one-handed, can't imagine using a bigger phone.

I've been using the "A" branch of the Pixel line for years now.

But I use CalyxOS so I guess you and I have to be enemies now. My name is Inigo Montoya, you use a different OS, prepare to die.

I can't trust anything made by google. It's a company that literally makes its money capturing everything everyone does on the internet...and yet the phone they make is the ONLY phone immune to having everything captured...

Sorry. Not buying it. There will be a chip in there phoning home we'll find out about in a decade.

I picked the Sony Xperia 1v because:

• 71mm width (similar to pixel 8)
• Flagship specs (*for 2023 - Snapdragon 8 gen2 / 12gb)
• not Google Samsung or Apple
• little to no bloatware
• Decent cameras
• SD card expandable
• Headphone jack 3.5mm (though I haven't used it yet)
• No glass back (and solid build quality allround)
• LineageOS support (for when vendor support runs out)
• I got a good refurb deal in 2024

I was considering a Zenphone 10 or Xperia 5 v - mainly for size and brand reasons as above - when i found this for £650

Is there an 8a? Those are usually the smallest model

If the pixel series had a damn SD card slot it would be the perfect phone for me.

I just want to sync all of my music and local backups to an SD card via syncthing dammit. I don't want to have to pay 200€ for them adding a 5€ chip

my Chinese tiny phone has a name, it's the Unihertz Jelly Star. they even have a subreddit, not sure what makes you think it's a "no name" they make a lot of phones for niches in today's world including one with a physical qwerty keyboard.

now the fact that they're the only company filling those niches sucks, but it's better than nobody doing it.

There was the iPhone 13 Mini. It’s adorably small. But it didn’t sell well so they stopped making the Mini line.

Still using mine too and it's awesome, all my coworkers also notice and compliment it. I do think there is a market for small phones

I want one. Can you put a custom ROM on them?

If I can't use it one-handed (using ALL physical buttons and ALL parts of the screen), then it's not a phone.

Seriously, this is how we used to define the difference between phones and tables - one-hand or two-hand use.

So once again instead of providing choice the market is simply phasing out things with smaller profit margins as if they planned it together in some kind of cartel.

it's also when mobile media in general was available on your phone. tv, movies, YouTube, games, everything. not everything is about porn.

240x320

One boob takes up 76000 of your 76800 pixels.

Sexy sexy nibbles the snake

This is exactly the problem. I don’t need a budget phone, I need a small phone

Hell I wish the big phones had SD card slots...

There are very very few phones that have them anymore. Chinese phones, Sony, fairphone, and Samsung midrange, that is about it...

The latest pixel pro is available in both the regular size and the XL. In previous models the pro was only available as the XL.

Yes they should put HUGE batteries into small phones!!!
/s

Yeah I get they exist, but I will lose that in a day

Plenty of people want small but powerful phones. The iPhone Mini line, for the 12 and 13 generation, offered the same features and processing power as the regular sized iPhone. But they didn't offer as much as the "Pro" model, which came in both normal and "Max" sizes.

So if you wanted the latest and greatest in CPU/GPU, camera sensors/lenses, display tech (not necessarily size), you tended to opt for the phone that just happened to be bigger.

Basically, there's never been a side by side comparison of the latest tech that actually happens to fit within the size of the first 5 generations of iPhone, versus the standard size of a flagship today.

I have fairly small hands, but still prefer a larger phone. More content on the screen and space for battery.

HOWEVER, I'd take both. A small phone would be a good secondary device. I want something modern the size of my Samsung Galaxy Ace (GT-S5830i). The back also has a really nice texture.
Oh, yeah, it also has a headphone jack, MicroSD card slot and quickly swappable battery which I should probably replace because it seems it has slightly increased its capacity... volumetric capacity.

But I also prefer a bit more thickness so it doesn't feel like a fragile, slippery sheet of glass (rugged phones are good for that).

I am a very average-sized woman with average-sized hands, and big phones would have been unusable for me. Seems like they're all for big men's palms.

They're saying the smartphone market is too homogenous and there should be more options so that people actually have a choice in the device they buy.

Yeah, but most cries (including this article) aren't "We want both" but "We want small instead". The article goes out of its way to ridicule "huge" phones.

The battle cry seems to be demanding it their way instead of variety.

Not big enough.

If you're not using Swype or whatever it's called on gboard give it a shot. I have dumb fingers and I can text in my work gloves.

"because it was shit" if you look at the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini they were essentially the same phone just in different sizes, while the sales of the mini stayed in the low 1 diget % the iPhone 13 was around 35-40% of all iPhone sales in it's first year.

I agree with some of the things in your 2nd part it has nothing to do with small phones.

And not to say you said it but it came up in the article a couple times, comparing screen inch sizes to determine if a phone is big or not is flawed > the screen to body ratio increased a lot over the last year's which means that a phone could have the same physical size with a bigger screen.

Small size means a smaller battery. If they make the phone's processor too powerful, the battery will run out in less than a day, and then everyone will be mad about that. There's also less surface to dissipate heat.

Making things smaller is harder and more expensive, but people who want small phones don't want to pay more than large phones.

It's a blind take. If iPhone 16 Pro Max sold less than iPhoneSE, then they would still sell the latter.

But there is no comparison.

I think it’s a valid criticism that should be welcomed. You could make this argument for any company when they make a bad decision.

“Oh well you trusted this company blindly so why are you upset and criticizing this design choice you don’t agree with.”

I also am not convinced a criticism is less meaningful if it’s the minority opinion. Many such cases in the world where the minority opinion is proven to be better for the majority.

I assume that the author specifically wants a smartphone.

A phone is just that - a secondary device

I don't know. more than 60% of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and it keeps increasing

I remember that term. It was short-lived.

My main complaint is that they don't directly support the US. There's a reseller here, but I think there are issues with some bands.

Maybe it'll be better the next time I need a phone.

The Fairphone is interesting, but it is also enormous unfortunately

There is always the iPhone SE 3 with 4.7 inch display or the iPhone 16e with 6.1 inch display.

Same, and I've never used an iOS device as a daily driver outside to work. I would literally dump my whole investment in the Android ecosystem over favourable form factor, especially now that Apple is on board with USBC.

I'd buy another 13 Mini, but I'm worried about how long it'll be before planned obsolescence takes over.

Thanks for the recommendation! I've checked them out before but found them a bit too bulbous.

I had my 13 mini for two years, and in that time I never once felt like the battery was on the way out. At worst it would be around 20% when I went to bed.

Zenfone 8 and 9 are valid options, I'm using one rn

Would you pay $1000 for one? Economy of scales matters...

Plus everyone who did look at them would say it is smaller it should cost less! Even though a smaller phone would be more technically challenging to build. Next you have compromises. No matter what you take out to make it work. People would removed, I need that! I don't need this other thing! Next battery life, people complain about current battery life, you think they want less?

I could go on, but I can easily see why manufacturers don't want to deal...

obviously they did exist. why do you think phone manufacturers would stop making them if they were as profitable as the other sizes?

It used to be the only thing you could buy. Then they started making bigger phones. Now everyone buys those instead. They stopped making them because people stopped buying them, not the other way around.

I'm probably gonna annoy people with this but I will shout it from the rooftops

Unihertz makes one.

Did I overlook the sales numbers? Do they exist?

Because cell phones are a business. If not enough people buy a format, it dies out.

See: Rotary phones.