{"id":222186,"date":"2025-10-24T08:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/222186\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T08:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:07:08","slug":"why-cant-i-buy-a-small-smartphone-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/222186\/","title":{"rendered":"Why can\u2019t I buy a small smartphone? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Apple<\/a> announced its new lightweight iPhone last month, my heart momentarily fluttered before disappointment set in. The new model is admittedly very thin, but I don\u2019t want a thinner phone. I want a smaller one. And I don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret that smartphone manufacturers\u2019 flagship devices have become bigger and bigger. But the disappearance of smaller alternatives represents an interesting puzzle. Dynamic market economies are usually very good at catering to many different segments of consumer demand, from the mainstream to the niche. So when it comes to small phone aficionados like me, even if we aren\u2019t the majority, why won\u2019t capitalism give us what we want?<\/p>\n

We used to have a powerful ally in Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who mocked the idea of big smartphones in 2010, saying \u201cyou can\u2019t get your hand around it\u201d and \u201cno one\u2019s going to buy that\u201d. <\/p>\n

In 2012 Apple\u2019s advert for the iPhone 5 demonstrated how comfortably the human thumb could reach across its 4-inch screen \u2013 something it called \u201ca dazzling display of common sense\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe iPhone 5c <\/p>\n

How times change. The battery health of my iPhone 13 mini, which has a 5.4-inch screen, is waning fast, but Apple has discontinued the line, and I have not found anything else of a similar quality and size. The consumer magazine Which? says it has not reviewed a phone with a screen smaller than 6.1 inches since 2022. Its survey of 1,000 readers suggests my frustration puts me in a minority, but not a negligible one: 33 per cent complained that modern smartphones were too large in general, while 19 per cent said the same about their own device.<\/p>\n

I have met plenty of men who dislike big smartphones, but for women, the inconvenience is compounded by the smallness of our pockets. When digital publication The Pudding measured the pockets of the US\u2019s 20 most popular jeans brands, it found that on average women\u2019s pockets are 48 per cent shorter and 6.5 per cent narrower than men\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In other words, women must now live in a world in which phone manufacturers think we have hands the size of bears and jeans manufacturers think we have hands the size of pixies.<\/p>\n

So why did big phones take over? In part, it is because our relationship to these devices has changed. People\u2019s phones have become their maps, their computers, their cameras, their torches, their newspapers, their games consoles, their wallets and their televisions. Many of those activities are simply much better on bigger screens. I prefer to use my laptop or TV for some of them but not everyone owns multiple devices for different activities \u2013 especially in big markets such as China and India.<\/p>\n

Technology analyst Carolina Milanesi at Creative Strategies says there are also technical constraints: because we now use our sophisticated multifunctional phones all the time, the batteries need to be bigger in order to last the whole day. The best cameras require room too.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The strange design choices that plagued the tech industryOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Given this direction of travel, analysts say it just doesn\u2019t make business sense for manufacturers to make smaller alternatives right now. My own iPhone 13 mini didn\u2019t sell particularly well relative to Apple\u2019s bigger models. \u201cWhat I hear back from the manufacturers is they say they do get these requests, and they accept there is a chunk of the market who would want something smaller, but that market is not big enough to justify the cost,\u201d Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight, told me.<\/p>\n

Innovation is happening, though. Some manufacturers, including Samsung and Motorola, have brought out \u201cflip\u201d smartphones that fold down small. But this only serves to highlight the final reason that capitalism is not giving me what I want: I\u2019m not behaving like a good free market consumer myself. Rather than shopping around, I have allowed myself to grow too comfortable in the Apple ecosystem in which all my devices synchronise with one another, which makes me reluctant to switch brands.<\/p>\n

According to a CCS Insight survey of consumers across the UK, Germany, Spain and the US, 58 per cent of smartphone users would not consider switching to a different brand next time \u2013 and 72 per cent of iPhone users. Wood calls the iPhone the \u201cHotel California\u201d of smartphones, because once you\u2019re in, it\u2019s very hard to leave. \u201cDo you have an Apple Watch?\u201d he asked me. \u201cI do,\u201d I replied. \u201cThen you\u2019re done. You\u2019ll take an iPhone to your grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is time to change tack. If smartphones aren\u2019t going to get smaller, we will just have to start a campaign for women\u2019s pockets to get bigger. \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Apple announced its new lightweight iPhone last month, my heart momentarily fluttered before disappointment set in. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[304,2306,1560,86,29128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-222186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-mobile","10":"tag-samsung","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-tim-cook","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}