Why can't we go back to small phones?

The iPhone SE is dead, and with it, the compact smartphone as a mainstream product. What happened?

Last month, Apple discontinued the third-generation iPhone SE, marking an unceremonious end to mainstream compact smartphones. Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo/OnePlus, and Vivo, the top four Android smartphone manufacturers, have not released a single phone with a display 5.5 inches or smaller in the past three years, according to data from GSMArena. Apple's smallest phones are now the 6.1-inch iPhone 16e and iPhone 16.

There are still a few niche companies working on smaller devices, like Unihertz, but those phones almost always have low-end hardware and limited software support. Eric Migicovsky, the founder of the Pebble smartwatch, announced plans in 2022 to create a compact Android phone—that project is now on hold while Migicovsky is focused on bringing back Pebble watches.

It really seems like high-quality compact smartphones are gone for good, but not just because real-world demand for these devices has declined over the years. They're gone and increasingly difficult to bring back, as both hardware and software trends towards large devices as the 'default' form factor. I think there is a narrow segment where small phones can work, but probably not as the 'flagship smartphone in half the size' product that most people might want.

How we got to big phones

Let's travel back to 2011 for a moment. Transformers: Dark of the Moon hit theaters, the Occupy Wall Street movement was in full swing, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Portal 2 were finally released, and no one could escape from LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem. This is the world in which the first Samsung Galaxy Note arrived, with its 5.3-inch display and S Pen stylus.

The Galaxy Note was not a uniquely giant phone for the time—the 5-inch Dell Streak predated the Galaxy Note by over a year—but it was a significant departure from most mainstream smartphones and heavily marketed. Michael Calore for Wired said in his 2012 review, "Closer to a tablet than a phone, the Note dwarfs the iPhones and Droids around it. Hold it up to your face to make a call and everyone around you laughs. Seriously, it never gets old."

Credit: Samsung

These giant phones were definitely absurd at first. I didn't have a Galaxy Note, but I did have the Samsung Galaxy Player 5 (also called the Galaxy S WiFi 5.0), which was a 5-inch Android device intended as an iPod Touch competitor. I received many comments about it from other students at school, and I have a vivid memory of a security officer commenting "I could watch TV on that!" to me as I put it into a plastic tray for scanning at an airport.

There were some issues with this larger form factor, most of which still exist today to varying extents. That Wired review mentions, "it's too wide to type or scroll comfortably with the thumb of one hand" and was "tough to carry in your front pocket comfortably while walking around or riding a bike." Vlad Savov's review at The Verge said the phone had a "one-size-fits-none form factor," and "pocketing the Note is an exercise in either frustration or denial."

There were benefits to the comically-large form factor, though. Touch keyboards worked significantly better with larger screens, placing another nail in the coffin of BlackBerry-style phones with physical keyboards. Engadget said at the time, "A larger display means larger keys, which are easier to see and simpler to tap accurately — if you can reach them." The larger screen was also just better for reading websites and books, watching videos and movies, and playing games. I certainly enjoyed Minecraft and Bloons Tower Defense 5 on my Galaxy Player 5.

Battery life was perhaps the strongest selling point for the original Galaxy Note. This was simple physics: the larger form factor could fit a larger 2,500 mAh battery, while that year's iPhone 4s had a ~1430 mAh battery, and the Galaxy S2 from a few months earlier had a 1,650 mAh battery. Engadget called the battery life "phenomenal," and that review from The Verge said, "I could regularly go from the start of one day to the end of the next without recharging the Note."

I strongly suspect battery life was the main reason large phones eventually became mainstream, as phones could continue increasing performance without sacrificing all-day (or even two-day) battery life. Samsung doubled down on this with the Galaxy Note 2's even bigger 3,100 mAh battery, though it still wasn't the top of the pack in battery benchmarks, as the larger screen did eat up some of those power reserves.

Samsung continued releasing new Galaxy Note phones on a regular basis, and slowly but surely, larger phones became mainstream. The 5.2-inch LG G2 arrived in 2013, the same year as the 5.9-inch Oppo N1 and 6-inch ASUS Fonepad Note FHD6. Nokia joined the big-screen party with the 6-inch Lumia 1320 in 2014, around the same time as Apple released the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus.

Credit: Apple

Eventually, other benefits to larger screens became apparent. You could fit more complex camera systems in larger devices, because camera lenses and sensors are similarly bound to the laws of physics as lithiom-ion batteries. Larger camera sensors improve low-light image quality, and more lenses (each with their own fine-tuned sensor) gives you more flexibility in photos and videos. I suspect the rise of mobile gaming throughout the 2010s and 2020s also created a snowball effect, as mobile games benefit greatly from larger batteries and screens.

Sure, larger phones are still harder to use with one hand and stuff into a pocket, but almost everything else is an improvement. The higher battery capacity improves daily usage, and perhaps more importantly, makes long-term battery health less of a concern. I bought my iPhone 15 at launch in September 2023, and after ~1.5 years of use and an 11% drop in maximum capacity, the phone still easily lasts all day. The larger display makes web browsing, games, streaming, and typing a better experience. You can more comfortably fit more cameras with larger sensors and lenses. Antennas and speakers can also benefit from more internal space, though not always.

The struggle to return

Let's say you really want a compact smartphone, more than you want a large screen, improved battery life and cameras, or anything else. Your highest priority is something you can comfortably hold with one hand and won't look like a solid brick in your pocket, and you might just prefer to do most tasks on a desktop or laptop computer. That is a reasonable request, but there are a few problems with doing that in 2025.

First, smartphones are now many people's primary or only computing device. SimilarWeb estimates that around 68% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices, with tablets around 1.6% and desktops around 30.5%. StatCounter has similar results, at around 62% for mobile, 36% for desktop, and 2% for tablets. Web traffic estimates aren't a perfect statistic for measuring general device use, but similar results can be seen in other data, too. The United States Census Bureau said smartphones were used in 90% of U.S. households in 2021, with smartphone-only households more common among low-income, Black, and Hispanic people.

Credit: StatCounter

If your smartphone is your primary or only computing device, it doesn't make much sense to choose the compromised experience of a smaller device. This is especially true now that large screens are available at all price points. The Galaxy A15 5G is Samsung's cheapest phone in the United States, available for $200 unlocked and free with a new line at many carriers, and it has a massive 6.5-inch display.

So, the potential market for a compact phone is continuing to diminish. Even if a company decides to make one anyway, there's another problem: mobile apps and websites are simply not built for small screens anymore. Mobile interface design has moved away 'hamburger' menus in favor of more buttons and functions always visible on the screen, which take up more space on smaller devices. On top of that, many web and app developers simply aren't doing much testing on small displays.

I fired up my original iPhone SE with a 4-inch screen and iOS 15, and while I didn't find any apps or websites that were outright broken, most of them are not a great experience. Double navigation bars, floating buttons, and excessive padding around elements are great on large phones, but not so much on these smaller devices. Web browsing is especially rough, as the floating ads and popups that are already awful on large screens are even worse, and some websites are expecting larger screen widths for proper text wrapping. Even when everything works, which is not always the case, you're in for a lot of scrolling.

This is a problem that can't be solved unless web and app developers do more testing on small screens, which might require completely different layouts and interaction methods in some cases. Small phones can somewhat bypass this problem by changing the display scaling, so the internal resolution becomes a bit closer to the default scale on larger phones. However, this makes text even smaller on the already-small screens.

You may think you want a compact Android phone or iPhone in 2025, but you almost certainly don't. I fully understand the appeal, as someone who chooses the smallest phone model at every opportunity, but there are just too many problems with them in 2025.

The compact future isn't Apple or Android

I don't think small phones are a pointless product segment, or that they'll go away forever. Again, Unihertz still makes them, the iPhone SE 3 will probably get software updates for a few more years, and Eric Migicovsky's project might eventually happen. However, with the mobile app and web ecosystem moving towards large screens, a compact smartphone running iOS or Android will be a severely compromised experience.

If there is going to be a high-quality compact phone again, it will probably need to use an entirely different software platform. Apple is the only one making iOS phones, and Apple doesn't seem interested in small devices anymore, so that door is shut. Most modern Android apps are not designed properly for small screens, so as long as they are critical to using the phone, they will make it a compromised experience.

The future of compact smartphones might look more like KaiOS, which is built primarily for phones with T9 keypads with 3-5" screens. I have a Nokia phone with KaiOS, and while some sites in the mobile browser are still rough, all the built-in and third-party apps are perfectly usable. When the software is actually built for the screen size, it's not a problem.

The lack of mainstream mobile apps and games might seem like a drawback, but we have seen plenty of companies spin it into a selling point. HMD Global took over Nokia's feature phone business in 2016, and continued releasing new models with the usual low-end hardware and T9 keypads, occasionally cashing in on nostalgia. At some point, HMD's marketing teams had the genius idea to pitch the phones as digital detox tools for Gen Z.

The press release for the Barbie Phone spins the lack of apps as "perfect for taking a smartphone break" and the 5MP rear camera as delivering "authentic Y2K style images." I have no idea if that was a successful strategy, but it could be something to try again in the future.

The compact smartphone as we know it might be dead, but still there's a chance for it to be reinvented. In the meantime, save yourself the pain and buy a normal-sized smartphone the next time you need an upgrade.