this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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No one big releases a small phone because no one buys them. Not even the people who whine and complaints about no small phone offering buys the small phones when they're offered. It's way too niche a market to break even.
Except we don't have any good data to say why. Do people buy a bigger flagship over a smaller model that has older technology? Yes, but the only thing we can say with confidence from that is that people want the latest technology. The closest comparison we can make is Apple's Max/Plus and non-Max/Plus versions, which offer essentially the same model in two sizes. The smaller size consistently sells better. It's also cheaper. Does it sell better because it's smaller or because it's cheaper? Probably both, actually. But as long as nobody offers a small flagship (since Apple stopped making them entirely and switched to larger flagships), nobody can say for sure how well they'd sell.
The phone makers can say for sure because they have years of market and sales data on them, and a huge amount of r&d lol
No, that's precisely my point: they don't because no major phone manufacturer has simultaneously sold both a large and compact flagship. And when there are legitimately comparable models in different sizes, the smaller size fairly reliably sells better.
That's not true. Apple sold a mini version for several generations and consistently the mini was always the worst performing version sales wise. Samsung made a mini version of the Galaxy S as well for a while. It also underperformed.
The "mini" lineup was never truly comparable to the flagship product. The specific deficiencies varied with the year but they were all missing an entire camera, and cameras are one of the single most important features of an iPhone.
The mini phones were significantly and arbitrarily gimped to mark them as a distinctly (and quite visibly) lower tier phone.
We do. The smallest iPhones, back when the iPhone had three sizes versions were consistently the less sold, by a wide margin. They still had old new stock years after the production halted. Even the modern small phones specifically made to address that niche market, underperform and end up with unsold stock on hand, despite having small production runs to begin with. This is publicly available info you can find googling for a few seconds. There are extensive essays made by journalist that always start hopefully looking for the perfect small phone, and end up discovering that none are made because they don't sell at all. There's not enough people who want a small phone (and I'm one of those people) to even call it a niche market.
Here's Marques Brownlee's breakdown of the issues and data available about small phones.
The smaller phones were not comparable models. They were a lower-tier product with fewer features. This contrasts with the regular and Plus/Max versions where it's very much positioned as the same phone in two sizes.
You ignore that it's physically impossible to put a flagship performance in an under 5 inch format. Under 6 is already a challenge. The battery alone scales with size. The camera is a physically space occupying bunch of glass and sensors, that even the ultra size phones have to put them in awkward bulges outside the phone main body to deliver the kind of qualety demanded by users.
Your demands are irrational and it's precisely why the manufacturers don't bother anymore. Bunch of drama from a perfectioninst segment that's smaller than 5% of the market at best, who never buy anything but complaints all day and night that their specific unrealistic demands are not met. This is not the way man. To have nice things you have to learn to compromise.
The compromise of the iPhone 13 mini were reasonable and it was still a high performing processor which could do the same things that the big brothers and the battery still lasted almost a whole day. The camera was equivalent in quality as well. It was praised by everyone and their mother as an achievement of modern engineering putting that much power in such a small form package. And almost no one bought it. End of story, get over it.
Not even slightly.
The obvious solution is to make the body of the phone very slightly thicker. Thinness is more important in a bigger phone to shave off some of the overall bulk and make it easier to hold but when the area of the phone is smaller, you can easily make it thicker, with the added advantage of making the camera bulge less ridiculous. I’m reluctant to even call it a tradeoff because you’re not really giving anything up. This would have been a legitimately comparable phone, but they never made it so there’s no direct sales comparison in the market. There is no hard data, only inferences.
Sure, whatever.