How to convince tech companies to make a smaller smartphone

Along A long time ago, smartphones were small. Like, really small. In the past, it was taken for granted that such a device should be easy to hold so that you could do everything you needed with it just your thumb. You see They seedefinitely Don’t do them like before.

In 2022, most “smaller” smartphones are still huge, with sports screens nearly twice the size of yesterday’s phones. Even Apple, the has produced a “mini” iPhone is in the last two years The form factor is believed to be abandoned with the iPhone 14 range this fall.

while the world seems to Not everyone wants to get away from smaller smartphones. Dig into enough technology Forums, and you’ll find users complaining about the lack of smaller smartphones on the market, especially in the Android world. While many customers clearly love these bigger screens, there’s definitely a sub-market of people who Happy to message, watch and play on a phone that’s easy to hold. One of these people is Eric Migicovsky.

Migicovsky is best known for starting pebblea smartwatch company that boasted back then the most funded project in Kickstarter history. Pebble was finally sold to Fibit, but Migikovsky now trying to make waves again launch a new chat app called Beeper and make a concerted one Try to inspire a tech company, any tech company, to bring that back small smart phone.

The Pebble founder has started smallandroidphone.coma website dedicated to the rresurrection of the little phone. His reasons for wanting are a small phone probably similar to those of anyone else: He just likes it that way. Migikovsky says he’s never liked the feel of a big phone, and although he’s a big guy, he’s always found a compact phone more convenient to use.

Migikovsky looks for four key things in a small phone: a screen smaller than six inches; a design profile roughly similar size and quality too the iPhone 13; great cameras; and standard Android operating system (sorry Apple fans). Funnily enough, Migikovsky actually uses an iPhone 13 for his little phone, but he doesn’t like iOS compared to Android. He cares so much.

Here’s his list of “must have” features on this new little phone:

• Follow Mini’s industrial design as closely as possible
• Uniform width border around the entire display
• 5.4 inch OLED display with 1080p (60Hz ok)
• Cameras must be as good as Pixel 5 must have excellent low light performance
• Standard Android operating system
• Snapdragon 8 (or other flagship processor equivalent)
• 5G world phone
• Hole punch front camera
• 2 rear cameras (normal and wide angle)
• 8GB of RAM
• 128/256GB storage
• 4 hours Screen On Time (SOT)
• Unlockable bootloader
• NFC

There’s also a short list of features that would be “nice to have,” but they are not strict necessary, in his opinion:

• Rugged enough not to need a case
• Waterproof according to IP 68
• Fingerprint sensor on the power button
• Hardware mute switch
• Wireless charging
• eSIM

If you’re happy with most or all of this wish list, consider signing Migikovsky’s petition. He wants to “unionize” the community of small phone enthusiasts and hopes to collect at least 50,000 signatures to present tech companies as proof that there is still a market for smartphones of this size. During The Verge’s Mitchell Clark is skeptical Migikovsky’s plan is enough to persuade a tech company to produce such a small device, it’s a noble cause. After all, both Clark and I signed this petition, so that’s two techs Writers at least who want this to happen.

As Clark showsthere are many hurdles here. First, the manufacturing crisis we’re in: Big companies that make established products are struggling to meet demand, leaving less room for niche offerings. Second, the probability is very small company will See the value in making a device like this, especially when Apple itself doesn’t seem capable of making it work. Third, small phones are hard to balance in 2022: today Chips are powerful today, and 5G connectivity is the standard. Both from TTubes eat into battery life, and a smaller phone means less room for a battery. That The iPhone 12 mini was even heavily criticized for its poor battery lifei.e. any company that wants to produce a modern smartphone Scale would have to find out how to manage all those moving parts. (Migicovsky suggests Make the phone fatter until the battery was big enough – and until then mMost of us don’t to need a phone as thin as Apple’s minis, but you probably don’t want to go too far the other way.)

From Friday morning Migicovsky’s petition has 20,000 signaturesdisplayed there is interested in this type of product. He still has a long way to go before he hits the 50,000 goal, and there’s plenty of that There are still questions to be answered, but I’m in. I would like to be able to use one small phone that meets today’s standards. If you feel the same way, sign this petition and bring us a vote closer to 50,000.