As a long-time small phone aficionado, one of the things that confused me beyond imagination is people's love-hate relationship with small phones. Go to any tech forum, Reddit thread or YouTube comment, and you will hear the plea "Make phones small again." The act of romanticising the days of the iPhone 5 or the original Moto X that vanished into a pocket and could be managed with a single thumb has always been prevalent, but no one likes small phones when companies actually do launch them.
The phones rot on shelves, production lines are cut, and the sales figures paint a completely different picture. It all feels like a paradox, where the tech world claims to want portability, but also consistently votes with its wallets for giant screens. Which begs the question, why is there such a massive disconnect between what we say and what we actually buy? Let's delve deeper.
The compact phone limerence is real
I recently stumbled upon a word called Limerence. In psychology, it's described as an involuntary state of intense romantic desire, an obsession with the fantasy of a person rather than who they actually are. I feel it's the perfect diagnosis for the tech community's relationship with compact phones. In our minds, we're limerent towards them. We idealise the comfort, the one-handed reachability and the minimalism.
But just like romantic limerence, the fantasy often collapses when it meets reality. As someone who switches between a Pixel 10 and a OnePlus 12R, I find myself pining for the Pixel. I am in a state of limerence for that compact ideal. But the moment I switch back to the Pixel, the limerence fades as the reality of a smaller screen hits. I don't actually want the small phone, I just want to want it.
The vocal minority vs the silent majority
The issue goes deeper than limerence. Because enthusiasts are limerent, they are also the loudest voices creating the false demand. Browsing the internet, you're bound to come across comments of users who want a sub-6-inch phone. This created a false sense of demand.
So who are these users? Sure, they are enthusiasts who value one-handed usability above all else. However, the mass market votes for screen real estate, and they never voice their opinions, because the market is filled with large phones.
Think of it this way. Users never review something online unless they receive a bad product. Therefore, you're bound to find more bad reviews on some products. Does it tell you that you should steer clear of the product? Sure, but it also tells you that the people enjoying the product are too busy using it to complain.
Therefore, while the millions of people happily purchasing a 6.7-inch phone simply go on with their lives, never feeling the need to post a thread saying "I love having a big screen". It's called the Survival Bias.
The physics of battery life
While it's arguable that the rise of Silicon Carbon batteries has solved the most prominent issue with small phones, it's hard to defy the physics issue. Compact flagships these days feature massive 5,500mAh to 6,500mAh batteries, but larger flagships go beyond, offering batteries of at least 7,000mAh and beyond. While Silicon-Carbon batteries have made compact phones all-day dependable, it has simultaneously turned regular large-sized phones into battery monsters.
While a smaller screen is the only battery-saving component in small phones, the rest of the components still consume just as much power as on large flagships. Combined with a comparatively lower battery capacity (still), compact phones may get you through a day, but only if you're slightly conservative.
To end on this, the market sentiment that bigger is better will always play a crucial role in the small-phone-big-phone dynamic. Numbers sell, and people are more likely to make an anxious choice before even trying the small phones.
The way we consume content has changed
We no longer use our phones as we did a decade ago. Users are consuming vertical videos more than ever, and smartphones have transcended from just being devices for making phone calls to gaming powerhouses. Besides, streaming has also made phones the primary media source for most users.
Watching content, playing games, scrolling through vertical videos and just browsing the internet just doesn't feel as good and engaging on a small phone as it feels on a large device. Therefore, most tend to prefer large phones over smaller ones.
Lastly, app viewing takes a major hit on smaller phones. The inability to display more content at once means you end up scrolling a lot in the long run. The keyboard feels cramped, UI elements sometimes overlap, and the text is small by default, which, when increased, makes you scroll even more. Therefore, while the market does want portability, it simply refuses to sacrifice screen size to get it.
Cramped space problems
While modern small phones have successfully inherited their larger siblings, they simply lack the physical volume to house the components. As the industry adopts ultra-thin designs, manufacturers are hitting the vertical Z-height wall. A flagship processor doesn't take much space, but high-end features like periscope telephoto lenses do, due to stacked prisms and glass elements.
When you shave millimetres off a phone's thickness, these bulky modules are the first to go. This results in users trading the 5x optical zoom and sustained performance for a slimmer profile.
This hurts the user sentiment around smaller phones more because they can lack a telephoto, but still do well in performance. The small phone issue was a significant one already, but it's exacerbated by brands trying to make them thicker.
Ultimately, compact phones don't sell because our digital lives have physically outgrown them. Your phone is no longer a communication tool. It's a portable console, a cinema and a workstation all at once. As much as we pine for the limerent ideal of a one-handed device experience, the reality is that we have transitioned.
We are caught in a cycle where we romanticise the ergonomics while demanding the performance, the thermal efficiency. The longevity and the optics we expect from a large phone are physically impossible to achieve. The traditional small phones are dead, but the current sub-6.3-inch phones carry their legacy by trying to offer everything a large phone can, and still fall short. We value the experience on the screen more than the comfort of holding it.
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