All that makes sense, but forget Apple, one of the Android manufacturers should serve this market. I feel like there's a sizeable niche that could fund one small, high quality Android phone. It's really never been done; all the small phones that have come out have been compromised in some way. Sony's Xperia Compact line came the closest, but it doesn't use stock Android, which is a huge point against it. I feel like it can't be _that_ hard: there are so many huge phones on the market. Just nix one of those models, put mid-to-high-range components in it, put a small display on it, chuck stock Android on it, and boom, you've just dominated a niche.
How did I not know about this? I just replaced my phone, so I can't really justify the switch, but that is almost exactly the phone I want! My only nitpick would be 32GB storage seems insufficient since android takes multiple GB of that and music collections plus a few apps will use up the rest quite quickly.
[edit] On My phone "System" is listed as 11 GB, other google apps add up to another couple GB, and my music collection is 14GB so out-of-the-box I could see me having just 5GB free with no other apps.
I just learned about it, too. Your complaint doesn't jive with the purpose of the device: A communication device.
It makes specific points to say that it is meant for those who don't want the phone to be a distraction. I don't recall the camera specs, but I can't imagine it's good by 2020 standards. Music, sure - it seems like the right size for a good MP3 player (remember that term, kids?)
I like the idea of a palm phone. Part of me thinks about getting a phone like it, and then a Oneplus 7T phablet, and swapping the SIM like you would swap a watch for different occasions.
Actually, depending on the response time and the reliability of getting SMS and calls post-swap, that sounds tempting...
Depending on your carrier, you could do this without swapping SIMs -- as far as I know, all of the Big Three in the US (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T) all have "number-sharing" programs normally reserved for things like smartwatches. In fact, Palm specifically advertises that they work with Verizon and T-Mobile, and proposes alternatives for other networks (https://palm.com/pages/companion). If you're serious about this, it sounds worth looking into!
> Music, sure - it seems like the right size for a good MP3 player (remember that term, kids?)
I own a sansa clip plus. It has a 32GB microSD card in it. An out-of-the-box storage of about 20GB would make the Palm phone a downgrade from my MP3 player.
The size of X Compact was perfect. Too bad it was so thick.
Doing it nowadays with a no bezel screen would give me a screen of the size I'd like to have. I mean: my current phone as a larger no bezel screen, but I'd chop away at least 2 cm of it to get a smaller phone the size of the Compact.
Since most phones are glass bricks these days, the assembly cost is approximately the same. Thus the profit margin on a larger phone is larger, and the incentive to build a smaller phone isn't there.
Even Android phones have logistic problems with this. Many of them use similar vendors. Creating a phone with vastly different size and components means a lot more sourcing and upfront cost.
