In the beginning, miniaturization was in vogue, but as smartphones took over, the need for a big screen dominated everything else. So we arrived at behemoths the size of a tablet. Do you remember the Dell Streak from 2010? It was marketed as a “tablet”, although it had a 5″ screen. Today, phones with 6.8″ screens are quite common, just a fraction of an inch away from the smallest tablets on the market.
You may think that Sony made great mini phones. And it was, until a few years ago. Today, Apple is the only one making a phone that is both small and powerful. Samsung flirted with the idea not so long ago, the Galaxy S10e was the smallest flagship in recent years.
But put performance aside for a moment – what’s the smallest smartphone you can buy? The answer is that it earns less and less the rating “small” with each passing year.
We think the height and width of a phone are the most important measurements when it comes to ease of use and business. We picked several popular brands and selected the smallest phones from each year (looking at width * height as a measure of their smallness).
Here’s how the front surface of these little phones has changed over the years – the upward trend is undeniable.
Creators have some leeway as they can increase the screen size by reducing the bezels. That only goes so far – the screen size of those smallest phones kept getting bigger and bigger, inevitably making them bigger.
We know what you’re thinking – the screen diagonal doesn’t tell us much without knowing the aspect ratio. And that’s true, phones are getting bigger and bigger. That’s because they’ve reached a limit on how wide they can be – about 70mm or so. This marked the end of the 16:9 industry standard, as the only way to grow was up.
Have they at least gotten thinner? Yes, they did, although that came out at about 8-9mm. As with the edges, there’s only so much you can shave off. Note that the chart below does not show the thinnest phone from each manufacturer, but the thickness of the smallest phone.
Another consideration is weight. This of course depends on the size, but materials also play a major role. Obviously, small phones have definitely gotten heavier over the years. Again, the chart shows the weight of our selection of smallest phones. But even if we only looked at the lightest phones (ignoring other dimensions), most smartphones don’t go below 140-150g.
Of course we only looked at big brands. We know there are a few small smartphones, like the recent effort to revive the Palm brand. That phone measures 96.6 x 50.6 x 7.4mm and weighs 62.5g. Now that’s pretty small. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell very well and the Palm brand is currently being used to sell TWS buttons (oh, how the powerful have fallen).
There are other small offers, for example the Jelly phones from Unihertz. But when you look at mainstream brands, “small” isn’t really an option. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s simply a consequence of consumer interests – or rather the lack of them. The iPhone 12 mini and 13 mini didn’t sell well either, and at this point it’s pretty certain that Apple will abandon the form factor (maybe until the next SE generation).
The new (and now discontinued) Palm phone • The Unihertz Jelly 2
Even if you go against the market trends and buy a small phone, you’ll find that the lack of interest in it has secondary effects – quite a few apps and websites don’t work well on small screens. Sometimes it’s just that the developer doesn’t bother to test on such rare devices, sometimes it’s because some apps and sites have become so complex that they just don’t fit on a 4” screen anymore.
At that point, you might as well get a smartwatch — they can handle calls and music (they can pair with Bluetooth headsets), let you read messages, and even send short replies. There are, of course, also feature phones.
But can you really live with the limited functionality of a smartwatch or feature phone? Maybe, but everyone needs a smartphone. And that smartphone has to deal with the various apps and sites we use every day, which in turn sets a lower limit on how small they can be.