Once upon a time you could get a small android device with good specs.
https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_xz1_compact-8610.php
It’s still my favourite phone, even though it’s been retired and is only used as an MP3 player with AUX in the garage nowadays.
I realize that for most people the phone is now a device to consume media through and that the larger screens are helpful there, but having a smart phone that is fully usable with one hand is still something I miss. Often.
Considering that modern androids have about 85% to 90% of their size as display size then a phone with the size of the xz1 compact should get a screen size of ~5 inches instead of the old 4.6 inches.
With the SoC advancements I don’t even feel that the phone would require a flagship SoC to interest me. Put a Snapdragon 6, as much battery as you can fit and an AUX input in it and I’m game.
What would make you guys interested in a smaller phone today?
Totally. I have one of the newer pixels and it’s on the smaller side relatively, but it’s the biggest phone I can use comfortably.
I wear a size medium glove and it’s insane to me that it’s hard to find a phone I can use comfortably in one hand.
At the same time, I’ve started to realize that I should do less with my phone anyway. So I really don’t need it to do to much besides get a good reception and have a day or so of battery life. The most demanding thing I’ve asked my phone to do recently was to emulate some Nintendo games and run llama3.2:1B. But both things are better done either on a device meant to perform that workload or via a self hosted server where my phone is just a client.
I’m with you on those specs. Maybe the best features of new phones is the water resistance. Idk of its possible to have both water resistance and removable batteries and SD cards, but I miss being able to swap out to a fully charged battery or upgrade the storage at a whim. If I hadn’t choose tho, id stick with the water resistance.
So to add to your specs I’d like:
Well the Sony XZ1 Compact got IP68 even with aux input and a microSDXC slot so I don’t think combining the SD Card with water resistance should be a problem. The swappable battery would probably be worse.
Regarding bloatware I’ve gotten used to using adb and the uad to remove it when buying a phone. https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater/tree/main