The vanishing of the small high-end smartphone
The vanishing of the small high-end smartphone
The ASUS Zenfone 10 claims to be a pint-sized flagship, but the truth is there have been no truly small and powerful phones in 2023.
Manufacturers don’t make displays under 6 inches available for purchase, with special cases (such as the iPhone Mini) being made under exclusive contracts. The best lead they have so far is to try to use displays designed for the front part of a foldable phone, but they’re yet to strike an agreement.
TIL that display manufacturers are also part of the reason why we aren't getting small phones and why it's probably even harder for manufacturers like Fairphone to make them.
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It's not really that complicated, people expect high end phones to have all day battery, which is hard to do with a small phone.
If only high end smartphone chips focus more on efficiency rather than performance, which for most people is already powerful enough for day to day use.
It would stand to reason that a smaller screen would lend to less power draw both for the screen's power usage and being able to use a lower resolution keeping the CPU draw lower too
75% of your battery cycle, the screen is off. So a smaller screen can only win battery in that 25% window. A bigger battery on the other hand can be applied to 100% of the cycle.
Unless you go oldschool lcd, a smaller screen does not gain as much as a bigger battery for battery cycle time.
My Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact had very excellent battery life for it's small battery. Sony definitely did an amazing job optimising it.
However, the 25% on-time use a lot more than 25% battery.
My zenphone is small and has good battery life. Wish more would shoot for this type of form factor
They could make a small screen phone, but thicker to make more room for a bigger battery.