> 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 would happily buy a premium device that is short and narrow, and possibly even thicker as a tradeoff. There’s plenty of unexplored room in the design space here. For example: start with an iPhone Pro or whatever the Android equivalent du jour is. Keep the camera unchanged. Shrink the display but keep the same quality (at least equal pixel density). Now puff out the back so that the camera lenses are flat or even slightly recessed. Use the resulting added volume to compensate for the decrease in volume due to decreasing the other dimensions. Market the think as a Whatever Phone Pro Compact, and advertise clearly that the battery life is every bit as good as the non-Compact model version. Show off cool pictures models sticking this thing in their cool jeans pockets without them sticking out. Charge the same price as the ordinary Pro model.
As far as I know, no one has tried anything like this in recent memory. The iPhone 12 and 13 Mini were always marketed as the cheaper versions, and the cute little old SE model was very much a low-end version. Last I checked, there was no 5G Android device with similar dimensions from any manufacturer.
> much of this effect is an error, or at least a far-less-than-ideal effort
No, the vast majority of people use their phones as video viewers, increasingly so after the rise of TikTok. I have family members in their 30s who don't have laptops or TVs, all media is consumed through their phone, and for most kids/teens across the world it is their primary video consumption device.
The average person is trying to maximize screen size relative to portability. And the market is everyone on earth. That's it.
There’s a bias here: video consumption is continuous, somewhat long and eye catching (both the movement on the screen and the focussed-starring position à la "look at the sky!"). Therefore we’re more encline to notice video consumption than other usages like music, navigation or notifications check.
Don’t take me wrong: I do agree that "the vast majority of people use their phones as video viewers", but the duration/day is not uniform and many don’t want/need to carry a half-tablet all day long in case someone shared a tiktok on the messaging group.
> Therefore we’re more encline to notice video consumption than other usages [..]
That's not relevant, as this is then forming our decision at the point-of-sale towards a media consumption device.
> many don’t want/need to carry a half-tablet all day long in case someone shared a tiktok on the messaging group.
Only while no media is consumed. Many people take less than one photo a day on average, but still the camera quality is a dominant decision-factor.
I'd even argue that the majority of price-premium paid by a customer today is for camera and display. Those will be the factors at the point of sale to decide whether to pay 50-100 USD more or not...
>No, the vast majority of people use their phones as video viewers, increasingly so after the rise of TikTok. I have family members in their 30s who don't have laptops or TVs, all media is consumed through their phone, and for most kids/teens across the world it is their primary video consumption device.
That is one thing that is more disgusting about using a smart phone now days. When iPhone first came out it is about a music player and phone with extra features to facilitate real life things.
I don't want a freaking small computer in my pocket, and looking at small screens for long period of time is just NOT good for our eyes or postural.
We need to start treat these small devices as something we interact with very occasionally to facilitate real life interaction, not get our face stuck to it.
Not that working on laptop or workstation is much better, but it is better than writing on and viewing a video on small screen.
> 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 sufficiently large group of buyers for these devices out there.
It isn't because the specs are inferior, the cameras are changed, the display has a lower pixel density (the Mini actually had slightly higher ppi) or anything else. There simply is no sufficient market, the 13 Mini was the worst selling phone in that generation by a frankly impressive margin. 38% for iPhone 13 vs 3% for iPhone 13 mini, despite them being as close to just being scaled down and otherwise identical as one can make a phone speaks a very clear language that any manufacturer wanting to succeed has hear loud and clear. Most certainly why Asus has seized with their more compact smartphones. The amount of people I know that praised Asus for making a more compact flagship with a very large battery [2] was not in any way proportional to their sales. In this case, the battery life was actually superior to many larger competitors. Same for my Xperia 5 V, the compact phone I bought and used at the time, cause I walk my talk and have been following phone releases to a sufficient degree that I can assure everyone, there have been and are flagship speced, compact phones with good battery life, that no one ever buys. I'd love more options in the market, heck, I use both the Xperia 5 and an iPhone 15 Pro Max in a Clicks case, either for different situations, so am on both sides as a consumer. Simply, the lack of any actual market demand beyond online comments makes that impossible, we need to be honest here.
The Asus Zenfones were not compact phones. They were almost exactly the same size as the regular iPhones and Galaxy S phones at the time (slightly narrower but thicker). And expecting them to sell well against those two is unreasonable.
It wasn't that the batteries were "substandard". I'm sure they were the same technology and quality as the standard iPhone 12 and 13 batteries. It's just that they were compressing the same hardware into a smaller form factor and, therefore, a smaller battery.
The only thing that used less power on the mini was the smaller screen, but that doesn't save enough power to make up for a physically smaller battery.
As a 12 mini user daily since it came out in 2020, I've only just now started to hit any noticeable battery dip (~85% after almost 5 years usage). It's still pretty solid on a daily basis. On very rare occasions, the smaller battery has required charging before evening due to excessive photos taken and/or nav without a plug.
FWIW, I will probably replace the battery by end of year, or next, and keep it going as long as I can... I refuse the massive "normal" phone size.
Imma big Mini fan but the battery is sorely disappointing after a year on both my 12 and 13. It's especially true in daylight when the display goes max; walking the dog for 15 minutes sees a 10+ % battery drop. It's nuts.
That said I wish they'd release a thicker version to compensate
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.
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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
The SE has always seemed, to me, a way to repurpose older iPhone components into a more modern shell, which is why the SE line has been replace by the 16e. 16e uses iPhone 13 dimensions.
You’re right but you’re kind of missing my point. The iPhone 13 Mini started at $699. The normal iPhone 13 started at $799. The Pro started at $999. People were largely not looking at detailed specs — the Mini was obviously the smaller, cheaper version for if you couldn’t afford the standard model, and if you wanted the dramatically better camera, you would pay $999.
Per my suggestion, Apple should have scrapped the 13 Mini completely and instead offered a 13 Pro Compact for $999. Or maybe even $1049 if it had a bigger battery than the standard Pro model. The profit would have been much higher per unit than the 13 Mini, and I imagine they might have sold more units as well.
I’m typing this on a 13 Mini, and I would have paid an extra $400 for a better camera and more battery life. Before I had this phone, I bought a 15 Pro, used it for a week, and returned it because it was uncomfortably large.
As per my source, the iPhone 13 outsold both the Pro and Pro Max together, so no the cameras could not have been the reason:
> Combined, all four iPhone 13 models made up 71 percent of iPhone sales, with the standard 6.1-inch iPhone 13 responsible for 38 percent of sales. The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max weren't quite as popular as the iPhone 13, but sold much better than the iPhone 13 mini.
In fact, the iPhone 13 alone sold more (38%) than the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max combined (30%). The plain old 13 was the most popular SKU, because no, most people do in fact not spend more for an added telephoto camera only a specific few have a true need for. The regular non Pro iPhone has across most years been the best seller, because it is a solid middle ground for the vast majority of people, making it the best basis for a small SKU to have any hope of succeeding. A 13 Pro Compact would have absolutely sold as poorly, maybe even worse than the 13 mini, considering both Pros did not outsell the regular 13 by itself. But even if a 13 Pro Compact had sold twice as well as the 13 mini (a very generous assumption considering it would have been 300usd more expensive), that would still be only 6% of total sales, a drop in the bucket.
Lastly, there are the Xperia 5s and there have been the Zenfones, both having better battery life than their large competitors, both being as (un)popular as Apples efforts.
Again, I like small smartphones, I'd love there to be a significant market for them. There simply is no way to look at the data and claim there is one beyond a tiny niche that a company such as Apple cannot realistically serve.
Apple tried converting their most successful SKU into a small smartphone. That failed to sell even a tenth of its large brother, despite being 100usd cheaper.
Sony literally scales their flagship down and gives it better battery life. Not really a success either.
ASUS made their own, fully dedicated line of compact smartphones which again, had better battery life than most large competitors and even included a 3.5mm jack, getting a second niche of customers to bolster sales. They too saw so few sales that they were forced to pivot to gigantic phones.
No matter what conditions, no matter how favorable, the same result.
My wife would have paid more as well. She still has her 13 because it's the smallest available smartphone. Unfortunately the new flip phones are a bit too thick for now.
>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 sufficiently large group of buyers for these devices out there.
You're being willfully obtuse here. It is the smaller version of the cheaper version of the iPhone. It's not a small pro, and that's what the original person was talking about.
No official LineageOS support according to https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/. And no, missing vendor support is still an issue even with Lineage support, as soon as firmware (and sometimes driver) updates are needed.
I would be all over the Unihertz stuff if that wasn’t the case. I see people talking about Lineage working, but I haven’t looked into it.
My ideal phone is something small and rugged with physical keys that supports Android Auto for navigation and a few other basic apps I need (Bitwarden basically).
I’m not completely against it yet, especially if it looks like I can use something like Lineage.
Software aside, I’ve heard mixed things about the keyboard on the Titan. Keeping an open mind though, I would like to support companies filling this niche.
The Jelly Max looks really tempting, but I'm a little apprehensive after running the Jelly Star for a while and dealing with constant dropped calls and bad call quality all around.
I'm in a similar boat. I really (really!) wanted to love the jelly star (when I used it for almost a month), but on Verizon I didn't have an LTE signal most of the time in the Seattle area, including downtown, which I find unreasonable. Also the battery life was horrible, 20% per hour of active use and 4% per hour of standby.
Using the jelly star proved that using a small screen is not a problem for me and I would gladly pay money for an experience like that.
But it also proved that it is not an acceptable option in terms of quality. Hopefully the Jelly Max is better in these regards.
I think Jelly Max the ideal size for me too (jelly star was a little too small for doing driving navigation). I'll keep an ear out
Maybe you haven't heard, but Samsung has been making folding phones that fold up to be very small. The Galazy Flip 7 is pretty much what you describe as far as easily being able to fit in a pants pocket, has plenty of battery life, high-res screen, and it even flips out to have a large screen. No, folding phones are not a gimmick, been using a fold 4 for a few years and it's been amazing.
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 would happily buy a premium device that is short and narrow, and possibly even thicker as a tradeoff. There’s plenty of unexplored room in the design space here. For example: start with an iPhone Pro or whatever the Android equivalent du jour is. Keep the camera unchanged. Shrink the display but keep the same quality (at least equal pixel density). Now puff out the back so that the camera lenses are flat or even slightly recessed. Use the resulting added volume to compensate for the decrease in volume due to decreasing the other dimensions. Market the think as a Whatever Phone Pro Compact, and advertise clearly that the battery life is every bit as good as the non-Compact model version. Show off cool pictures models sticking this thing in their cool jeans pockets without them sticking out. Charge the same price as the ordinary Pro model.
As far as I know, no one has tried anything like this in recent memory. The iPhone 12 and 13 Mini were always marketed as the cheaper versions, and the cute little old SE model was very much a low-end version. Last I checked, there was no 5G Android device with similar dimensions from any manufacturer.