My search for a small phone in 2025
I had been using an iPhone 13 pro since 2022. With a screen protector and a modest case, it still weighed in at ~240g. That is a LOT of phone. Using it one-handed was tolerable at best and chronically painful at worst. I can write another article (or a book) on my thoughts on the current state of the smartphone industry, but for now let’s rewind my weeks-long quest for a ~four-headed unicorn~ small smartphone, and how it ended with having to buy a brand I had swore to never buy: the Samsung Galaxy S25. Read on and you might find something to pick from the devices that I rejected.
What I want?
- A sub-5 inch screen
- Shouldn’t weigh more than a blue whale’s testicles
- Should run an OS that receives security patches for at least 2 years from my date of purchase
- Should not be an iPhone. I’m sick of Apple
Why I want it?
- Because my hands (and I’m sure most people’s hands) are simply not made to hold and use a 5+ inch device.
- Because I don’t watch video on my phone. But even if I have to on the rare occasion when my iPad has run out of power, or I’m on the window seat and my backpack is in the overhead and I’m too nice to make two people remove themselves from their seats to get my fix, then 5-inch and 7-inch are the same to me. I can live with that.
- Because for unfathmoable reasons, the in-limbo smartphone industry wants to shove an annoyingly specific idea of what a good phone is down our throats, and most of us have drunk that Koolaid.
- Because I want it. Others want it. There is a market for it. Because there are mega-corporations making smartphones and they should be catering to even a smaller market. But capitalism isn’t capitalisming. A few of these mega-corps have monopolised the idea of what smartphones should be. And it’s awfully boring.
So I get on Google, type “small phones 2025”. I see Youtube links of videos with that exact title. The smallest phone in theese videos is 6.5 inches. FFS. Time to go to Reddit. Turns out, there is a whole subreddit for discussing small phones: r/smallphones. Take note, megacorps. On here, I learn about another subculture within this larger one - of the dumb phone.